An Alternate Witness

I had a fascinating encounter today, while folding laundry, with a visiting Israeli math professor who is living temporarily in my building. When, in casual conversation, I mentioned living in Jordan for a couple years, he was immediately fascinated, and told me he had been in Haifa, Israel, during the summer's war, and wanted to hear my opinion on the whole thing.

I was reluctant. Having lived in the Middle East, in a predominantly Palestinian country, I know that these things are emotional issues. He must have heard this in my voice, because he hastened to say that he was center-left, in favor of peaceful coexistence but, as became increasingly apparent through our conversation, truly baffled at where Israel had gone wrong and what they should have done differently.

I had to concede, as angry as the conflict made me, sooner or later Israel had to respond to the direct threat of thousands of rockets in the hands of a group, Hezbollah, which had publicly announced its intention to wipe Israel off the map. What, then, he kept insisting, should Israel have done differently? They have their own internal struggles over the Palestinian Territories, and the corresponding international rhetoric and politics. Israel is a small country with limited resources, and now they and the Palestinians are suffering because Hezbollah has diverted their attention and resources. What should they do? What should they have done?

For one thing, I said, perhaps Israel should, from time to time, speak up and contradict their allies in the West. Perhaps they should speak up and say, for example, Don't go to Iraq, you'll just make things worse, or, Leave Iran alone, they're more bluster than threat. I subscribe, in large part, to the theory that what happened in Lebanon was a proxy war between Iran and the United States, more political than ideological.

But what I kept coming back to was education. I admit, as a teacher, I'm biased. But I truly believe that the root of the problem in the Middle East is in education. Totalitarian governments like the Baathists and the Saudi Wahabis want a generally ignorant population. They're easier to control, easier to marginalize. But democracies demand educated citizens, to a fairly high level.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things about teaching in Jordan was that my students didn't understand the basic concepts of critical thinking that American students take for granted. It is so ingrained in the American and European systems that teachers do it automatically, urge their students to be skeptical, to look for corroborating evidence, to identify a writer or speaker's point of view, his prejudices. The majority of Jordanian students I met, and even many of the older teachers, weren't familiar with the basic concepts of critical thinking. I can't tell you how many times I heard, 'But I read it on the Internet! It must be true!' From adults as well as children.

King Abdullah's Minister of Education works very closely with the American and European embassies, and with Western educators, to integrate critical thinking into the national curricula in all subjects, and to teach Jordanian educators about such basics as Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives, teaching to aural, visual and kinesthetic learners, personality theories like Meyers-Briggs and their application in the classroom, and essay writing. I helped lead a workshop in my governorate on critical thinking, and helped my colleagues apply these skills in the classroom. The public goal of these reforms is to hone Jordan's human resources--it's ONLY natural resources!--to take advantage of opportunities for leadership in Information Technologies in the Middle East. Privately, I have on impeccable authority that King Abdullah has said he doesn't wish to be king forever, he would rather see Jordan function as a true democracy.

If Israel, the United States, Britain, or anyone wants to see real progress in the Middle East, they must support education, they must support the teaching of critical thinking, a cornerstone of democratic literacy. If a nation like Israel doesn't have the resources for this, they could at least speak up and call on those who do--the US, UK, EU, UN, Japan, anyone!--to put their money where their fear is.

The drawback to this method is time. It is likely to take 30 years to show real progress, because the older generation doesn't know how to support their children in this new kind of education. Parents asked me all the time, especially the mothers about their daughters, 'I want her to succeed in school, I want to help her, but how can I do that? I'm not even literate in Arabic, I don't understand these things she's studying.' It will be the next generation of students who truly benefit from the reforms of this generation.

But the advantage is longevity. A democracy achieved gradually, from the bottom up, from the first grade up, is more likely to be successful over the long term than one imposed from without. Don't take my word for it. Take Ghandi's:

"The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within."