Wednesday, 30 August 2006
Saudi Arabia is now hosting the Regional Conference on Giftedness with many international key speakers presenting their latest research in the field and a set of invigorating workshops. This is one of the top-notch conferences ever held in the Kingdom. This said, what is it in for us? A lot, to say the least.
It is undoubtedly a move toward the right direction in our education system. Ministry of Education should be smart enough to take advantage of the event through direct contact with the authorities in the field and the findings of the papers presented. Implementation of research findings should be taken seriously to not only improve our work on giftedness but also to rectify a big portion of our education system.A brief visit to any public school is enough to show you that our education system is in jeopardy and needs a real long-term fix - despite the generous government support of public education over the past three decades.
Take a contemplative look around, talk to teachers and principals before talking to students. An air of frustration would haunt you. Something just does not sound right with our education system.
A few quick-fixes - as it is the favorite practice of our managements - are not going to do it. So are we really talking about giftedness before taking about an education system?! Fine! Then how about a conference of this scale on school management and teacher's preparation? There are many exciting ideas and available funds on this particular issue but we are missing the people who are ready to go ahead with these ideas.
The Ministry may be aware of the importance of such management conferences, and a few of them may have been held here, but the question is: "Are we getting anything solid and seeing anything tangible at these scholarly conferences other than an exchange of business cards and meetings in lavish hotels?" Have we thought about a total reevaluation of our education system as to its mission and performance? The Ministry of Education has been discussing giftedness for a while now without paying due attention to the problem within. They call themselves "public" schools but they don't discuss their problems publicly, if ever privately. Ironic!
The problem of too many undiscovered yet gifted students in our public schools is that these schools completely ignore critical thinking that would eventually help gifted students pop out of the box of fossilization.
Giftedness is essentially an above-average, developed academic ability. To begin with, we need to tap the average ability of our students first before hitting for an above-average one. Below-average students - some of them may be good prospects for giftedness - are crowding our public schools for a variety of social and educational reasons, one of which is underdeveloped educational leadership that fosters memorization and rules out to a great extent nurturing students' critical skills.
In a nutshell, we need an above-average leadership ability to help create, nurture, or polish students with creative ideas, skills, and productive thinking.
With old policies of learning strategies, a typical school day is crammed with repetition of a dull curriculum by a programmed teacher who has learned the textbook by heart and does not empower students with new material, if any, meaningfully. By the end of the day, the student goes back home happy with little or no educational tasks to think about and keep him/her intellectually stimulated.
Let's load their minds with something constructive and intellectual to think about, right from well-designed and well-developed textbooks.
In fact, a whole educational package needs to be introduced into our school system. The question of how to discover gifted students is always tackled in various forms and the answer is simple: 'Look within our school system.' Once our students are provided with a good updated curriculum operating on their already acquired knowledge and life experiences, they will start thinking critically of their subject matters. The emphasis on curriculum is more important than a lot of people think. We need to reach an advanced level of interactive relationship between our teachers and students, mediated by a good curriculum. We can't separate our curriculum from the world around us if we are really interested in discovering and nurturing giftedness. Giftedness is significantly correlated with curriculum design and handling.
In spite of these simple theoretical education bases, our educational leadership still nurtures unwanted educational centrality. For example, with students now going back to school, our school science books still classify Pluto as a planet despite the fact that it was already stripped of its planetary status.
About this particular incident, a school principal said, "We will stick to the scientific information in the textbook until something about the change is received from the Ministry of Education." This is the mentality of our educational "leaders."
Mr. Principal, your Ministry of Education is a mere receiver of the info with no scientific authority to argue against a decision taken by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Why would you wait for something official from the Ministry when it is already official from the original source? It is an important element of the educational process that subject matters overlap students' existing experiences and the world around them.
Although we have gifted students, we lack gifted educational leadership that would turn schools into stimulating workshops rather than buildings that don't even compete with the lowest international standards. A good school environment is a must for giftedness. It is also crucial to discuss educational leadership, stimulating curriculum, and motivated teachers first before speaking in real terms about our gifted students.
When a school is no longer a real school, a gifted student is simply lost in the abyss between giftedness and educational leadership and environment.
We need to introduce a whole change of our current educational mindset, agenda, curriculum, create a good school environment, improve our teachers, motivate them to make true mission of education their top priority, and most importantly get them out of the rat race of the stock market - either get them back to education or endorse them as stock brokers.
Our Ministry is unfortunately plagued with educational problems and unless it is ready to undertake a real shake-up, the status quo will remain. We should discover our gifted students and support them. Once we do that, we don't want them to go somewhere else out of frustration and lack of nurturing. We want them right here but we should know how to do it. Ministry of Education, is anybody home?
By Abdullah Al Bargi
© The Saudi Gazette 2006
