The Arab World Uprising: Implications for Education on the Ground

Students gather peacefully for the outcome of negotiations to be announced.

As People Power continues to sweep the Arab World, a teacher stationed here cannot avoid asking what this means for education. This was a comfortably theoretical question until six days ago, when our campus cafeteria suddenly transformed into a thronging Speaker’s Corner, with students on chairs flinging their turbans in the air and chants beginning to rise. Although rumblings in Oman had subsided, my immediate pulse-racing assumption was that this was political. It turned out to be far more significant.

On my campus, students had harnessed the spirit of empowerment and rallied together in an unprecedented call for – wait for it – improved educational conditions. In a tertiary institution with no student union and few formal associations, there had been no channel for this until it spontaneously emerged this week. Granted, it was an incoherent, ineloquent and slightly immature uprising. Yet its very existence tells me that students have awoken to a sense of personal responsibility (see my musings on that here).

Over the past four-odd years local higher education institutes have been implementing an array of top-down strategies to secure their pending accreditation under the Oman Academic Accreditation Authority. Among the myriad resulting buzzwords, “graduate attributes” guide our educational process. One key attribute is for students to take responsibility for their own learning – an aim in which I admit limited success. The events of the past days show that learner responsibility is now emerging organically from grassroots level. It seems that students, too, are now on board to work towards world class standards within a local context. And that of their own accord.  

The groundswell of popular participation in the Arab World has many complex facets. As a guest I will not pretend to understand it all (unlike the over-excitable international mass media and hype-happy Twitter mob far across the big blue blameless sea). What it does tell me, as an educator committed to the fulfilment of individual and collective potential, is that the youth are awakening to the fact that they themselves are responsible for their learning and their lives. The educational partnership that results from this demands the very best from me, my students and our organization.

In my last post I wished for my students’ intelligent and wise harnessing of the spirit of these times. I could not have imagined that its impact would be so profound and personal for them. And I could not possibly have imagined just how my esteem for them would grow.

After four days of peaceful and friendly, but very real, disruption to classes, students gathered peacefully as the results of negotiations were announced (image above). Reasonable demands were met where possible, while others had been referred to task teams and relevant authorities. College leadership handled the entire incident very positively, and acknowledged that it pointed out areas for improvement within the system.

Note: My entire hat collection off to Dhofari Gucci for unparalleled English language coverage of the situation in Dhofar. 


Update, Monday March 7: Rumours of a leadership shake-up are rife but have not been officially confirmed. I am personally aware of the dedicated work of so many of the educators involved, and hope that any changes will be to the benefit of all these individuals, and to education at large. We each have our sphere of influence, and I trust that we will exercise our powers within it first, before casting stones. 



Update, Wednesday, March 9: A few dedicated students have been in class for what have been very interactive, personal and meaningful sessions, although these have been interrupted by gangs of riled-up students pressuring them to leave. I almost cried with pride when my fifteen students convinced one noisy mob that they would join protests as soon as our "chat" was over. Alongside  is a picture of my students taking photos of the whiteboard, since they didn't want to provoke confrontation by openly taking notes. 


I wholeheartedly support the awakening of public participation. Yet I should stress that this makes education, wisdom, common sense and compassion all the more essential. Like my students, I want a great college, a great future and a great country. To make it happen, we all need to take our new insight and passion and get back to class and use them. 


Final Update: Students returned to classes on Saturday, March 12, even though protests persisted on other campuses around the country. Despite having missed almost two weeks of instruction, the authenticity of English communication brought about by these events seems to have elevated students' language use, alertness and general eagerness to learn and take a hand in their own lives. All has been peaceful and for the greater good. As they say round these parts, Alhamdulillah.