Popular Education

What they hold against the teaching curriculum is that it strengthens the foreign languages at the expense of Arabic — although the Arabic literature program is, in my view, the best that the secondary level of study could attain. And the curriculum leaves room for the teaching of the sciences in Arabic; but it allows the student the opportunity of studying them in the foreign languages, so long as Arabic textbooks in these subjects are wanting. If, then, the teaching of the sciences in the secondary schools continues in a foreign language, the fault is not the curriculum's but that of the authorities, who do not commission a number of specialists to compose Arabic science books fit for the students' use.

Here some object, saying: teaching the sciences in Arabic would narrow before the student the field of deeper study in the sciences, because the reference works to which he must turn to broaden his knowledge are foreign works. And students of university specialization will find great difficulty in studying the sciences and other university subjects in a foreign language if their study of them in the secondary classes was confined to Arabic books.

Another party answers this objection, saying: not all secondary students are candidates for entering the university; that is reserved to a portion of them not exceeding ten in a hundred. And since the members of this group are — or ought to be — among the superior students, it will not be difficult for them to master the foreign language well enough to pursue specialization in the sciences by way of that language.

It cannot be denied that the mastery of a foreign language is a desirable thing for every Eastern student. But the fulfillment of this wish is unattainable, considering that eighty in a hundred of Lebanese students go no further in their studies than the class of the elementary certificate. That is to say, eighty in a hundred of them are unable to read foreign books and confine their reading to Arabic.

And what draws attention of late is the eagerness of the working class and of people of limited culture to educate themselves by means of the radio, the newspapers, the light magazines, stories translated and untranslated, and all the rest of what the presses of Egypt and Lebanon produce for the reading of the general public.

That is a welcome sign, deserving of attention, and it obliges those responsible to foster it by the following means:

First — supervising the Arabic books that circulate among the members of this class, so that they may be of a good standard in language and in information, and free of the filthy tales and stories which the book merchants take to spreading among adolescents and other seekers of mental recreation and intellectual amusement.

Second — composing science books in Arabic, for the intermediate classes at least, so that students who do not master a foreign language may be enabled to add to the scientific knowledge necessary to every individual in this scientific age.

Third — encouraging the founding of magazines and the composing of books that spread applied information in health, physics, chemistry, agriculture, and psychology, in that simplified, easily grasped form which they call Popular Science. This measure has its importance among us as a check on the dominance of the political press, which all but monopolizes the population's attention, and in view of the growing need for applied science

in the home and the factory, on the farm and in all the other spheres of work.

Fourth — striving for the composition of reading books for children and adolescents in all the branches of culture — sciences, history, travels, stories, morals, and society. For the Arabic schoolbooks in their hands are few, limited in value and in subject, and their deficiency must be made good by means of reading books.

These are observations stirred in my mind by a conversation that passed between me and a teacher in a village school, who asked me about books he might read in Arabic, among them a book on psychology. I was at a loss for an answer, and I could not advise him to read foreign books, because his knowledge of English was confined to a few rudiments that did not permit him to read.

The true measure of the level of culture in a country is not the small elite of university graduates, but the average man, who represents the overwhelming majority. And so long as the majority among us is incapable of educating itself by reading, this state of affairs will lead to the stagnation of the cultural level, or its decline, by comparison with the other neighboring countries, which have begun to outstrip us in the means of popularizing the sciences and spreading general culture.

I pointed out in a previous article the necessity of maintaining a high cultural level in Lebanon, where the desire for learning abounds and its centers — presses and schools — are many. Is it not fitting, then, that we take the lesson of the hare and the tortoise?