Factory of Cheaters [Part 3]

Here we go again. This time I would like to expose some of the private language schools; specifically, the highly expensive ones which welcome the children of the nouveau riche. What I'm about to say can be stranger than fiction, but every single word of it is true.

Those schools are actually no more than a social club, where kids go to get even more spoiled and receive a certificate in the end of the year. It is a kind of new service for the rich, which aims to satisfy the customer to be able to keep his money flowing to them. Therefore, if you ever happen to go there, you will find fancy stuff which have absolutely nothing to do with education or its quality, merely for marketing. Like the full option cars, these schools have got luxurious buildings, swimming pools, tennis courts, horse tracks, cafeterias, conference halls …etc. They want to dazzle those rich parents and assure them that their loved ones will receive 5 stars treatment.

As you can guess, such a club is built to entertain. Something as serious as education will ruin the fun atmosphere, and they don't want to scare their customers away. If the kid goes home and complains to his parents, even on a false basis, the parent might then switch to another shop.. I mean school. That's why they make sure that the little angels will have their best time and in the way get whatever education they can through the day. Those students will have the chance to go on as many as 15 trips during the academic year! Their teachers aren't allowed to punish them in any way, even if it is by asking about their homework. Oh, how rude would that be! How can a teacher ask the student whose parents provide his/her paycheck? And what if this student was rude in class? What's the big deal, he's just a kid. And what if he didn't bring his schoolbag? It is his bag not your, he is free to bring it or not. And what if he doesn't attend your class? He has the right to walk about instead of sitting the whole day. It is his school, not yours. You have no authority over him whatsoever.

Now what about exams? Well, we trust them, we don't need to distract them by moving around while they are kind enough to take the exam. But even this is not enough, for none of them can help anyone else with any answers. What can be done? Then comes your role as a teacher. What are you paid for? Your job is to make sure all those students pass, and with high grades. Yes, believe it or not, that's a teacher's job at those schools. You have to make sure that every student has a report which will draw a smile on our dear customers' faces.

What about nationwide exams? Now we really got a problem here. Errr, how will those students pass their thanawya 3amma exams for example? The teachers who supervise those exams are outsiders, as well as those who grade the sheets. Can a business like that allow anything to jeopardize its profits? Of course they have everything carefully planned. I am sorry to say, that the teachers assigned by the educational zones to supervise exams at such schools are very... I don't know which adjective to use here. Excuse me, but I have to say this.. very poor and low-profiled. What happens is that those teachers will be generously hosted by the school, if you know what I mean. They have croissant and canapés for breakfast, and soft drinks and hot drinks during their supervision. Now, you can guess how they pay back for this hospitality.

And the student, you might wonder, what will they do after graduation? They will get promoted to bigger supermarkets; namely, private institutes or universities. How considerate of you. Well, don't worry. They either work in the family business or use dad's connections to find a job. If you want something that is truly worthy of worrying about, it is the future of this country.

Depressed

A student dies while waiting to salute the Minister of Education. Click here to read>>

This is better left without any comment from my side. But ever since I heard about this tragedy, I felt that if I don't let out my rage I could explode at any moment, or even get a heart attack. So, please allow me to use this post to pour out the pain that is tearing my heart since yesterday, when I first learned about the death of Amira, the 11 year old student from Qenna. May she rest in peace, away from the burning sun which took her life in mercy maybe. It's enough what Amira has already suffered from this rotten educational system, that the visit of the minister finally comes to put an end to it all.

Usually when you know about such tragedies it is the official comments which makes you even more furious. That's how I felt while listening to Mr. Medhat Ahmed, Deputy of the ministry of education in Qenna, as he enthusiastically struggles to defend his excellency the minister and seeking to prove that his visit had nothing to do with the death of Amira. His first sentence was "His excellency's plane landed in Qenna at 9:00 am. It took him then 30 mins to reach the school afterwards. The students didn't wait that long, and this girl was already sick and had high temperature." Yaaaaaaaaaaaah.. How can a person be that thick-skinned? How can a human being reach this degree of heartlessness that he doesn't even express any kind of sorrow at the lost innocent soul? How can hypocrisy take over to such extent?

Ba2a kedda? It was the girl's fault? As if she chose to rush out of her school to stand in the sun while she is sick to salute the minister? The only important thing is that his excellency's hands are clean. He didn't kill anyone.

Wallahi if God chose to ease Amira from this life at this moment, then she was murdered once again by this man, who only cares about keeping his chair and proving his loyalty to his minister. And although I don't believe in ghosts, I pray that her ghost will haunt him all his life. As to the minister, he is already murdering our children every day by insisting to be received with qeues of hailers every time his highness decides to visit a school. 3ala ra2y Mr. Medhat Ahmed, "He's not less than his excellency the Governor who has similar receptions every time he visits a town." How can those people sleep at night? I wonder.

After hearing this man speak, the only thing that popped into my mind was Adel Imam saying, "Shafakom allah w3afakom ya ostaz Medhat." As long as people like you exist, we can never have hope in a better future.

Factory of Cheaters [Part 2]

I've talked in part 1 about how the Ministry of Education has turned into a "Factory of Cheaters" selling the lie of education, while in fact inserting the germs of cheating into our youth.

Allow me to tell you more about this here, as I reveal a lot from my past experience in teaching. Through the years during which I had worked as a teacher, I realized how there was lack of any real educational system. As a matter of fact, the system was there to make sure there would never be a system (sounds like a riddle I know). But it is all a bunch of nonsense. Our role as teachers was in fact to keep the chain of cheating going. How? Let's see..

First, we cheat ourselves into believing that we are teaching or educating, while in fact we are just there to fill a gap in a class full of students (ya3ni akeed class and students, yeb2a lazem teacher wala eih?). Then, we cheat the students and make them believe that they are being educated. Next, we cheat the parents by keeping their kids occupied by homework, making them believe that their children are receiving an education. And then we cheat the whole world by examining the students and giving them grades when they already had had the answers before the exam.

Bad enough? Well, that's not all. But let me first explain that teachers are not the evil guys here. The process actually starts from above. Yeah, ma3lesh, I'll once again refer to "the factory". See, the problem is that the curriculum itself is carefully made in a way to be too long, too complicated, too fragmented, too incoherent, that it cheats everybody. Once you lie your eyes upon the curriculum, you'll think "Wow, that's really difficult and full." Oh yeah, it is full, but full of rubbish.

For example, if you teach English at a language school, you have to teach not one curriculum, but two. Aywa wallahi two! There is the advanced level of the language school (cause students there learn English since KG1) and there is the curriculum taught at governmental schools. Now, to teach both curricula is absolutely impossible, not only because it is time consuming and pointless, but also because I'll make a jerk out of myself in class. Yesterday I am teaching Shakespeare and today I am teaching "My name is Om Luji"!

Those who used to come from the ministry for inspection basically cared about the ministry's curriculum. They are all 100% sure that we don't teach it, yet they also like to cheat us and ourselves into thinking that they are doing their jobs. There is a separate preparation book for this curriculum where all the lesson plans should be listed with the dates when they were given. There are also samples of notebooks and workbooks where the students answer its exercises. All these are a hoax. They know I know they know it is a hoax, yet we should all pretend that it's not so. We should cheat ourselves before we cheat everybody else. That's how the system works.

Let's move on to the process of examination. You may wonder what I meant by saying that students receive the answers before the questions. Hey, haven't you heard about the wonderful invention of "model answers"? Ahuh.. Yes, for every question there is a model answer that the students are given to memorize in order to write it back onto their answer sheets. It's that simple. And then we grade our own answers, the ones we wrote for the students to memorize. Teftekro momken 2a2ool el2egaba bta3ty we7sha? ady nafsy sefr maslan? Of course our answers are the perfect ones, so all the students do great. Except those who aren't careful enough with spelling or have a weak memory, those might get a bit less. But for sure everybody passes. Wkol sana wento taybeen. W2alf mabrouk. W3o2bal elsana elgayya.

*To be continued bardo..