We Don't Need No Education--Or Freedom

Taking a look at the most recent UN Development Program Report on the state of knowledge and freedom in Arab (and other Muslim) states gives the impression that Arabs neither have nor want much in the way of education and its necessary twin, freedom. To summarize the many metrics employed in making this report: Arab and other Muslim states rank at the bottom of the human heap in education, knowledge production, human capital development, economic freedom and, last but far from least, personal and political freedom.

This harsh judgement obtains even though some gains have been made in primary education such that illiteracy has declined among both men and women in the region. Still, the majority of people in the Arab countries remain unable to read or write at even the most basic level.

Overall the quality of education in Arab states--particularly that at the secondary and post-secondary level--is questionable at best. Putting the matter bluntly, the achievement of students in the hard and life sciences is very unimpressive as is that in mathematics and the higher technologies. The very fields of human knowledge most critical for success in the world today and into the foreseeable futures are those most under served in the Arab-Muslim states.

No one should be surprised by the gloomy assessment offered by the high priests of cultural relativism at the UN. Alone among the major religions of the world Islam looks only in its collective rearview mirror. Just as Islam holds that there was no history before the birth of the Prophet, it holds that the time and place of Mohammad, the Perfect Man, constitutes the halcyon of the human condition.

Nor can the constant linking between the "Will of Allah" and the outcome of any scientific experiment be discounted in appreciating the inherently reactionary nature of Islam and all educational systems under its sway. To put the matter simply but accurately, if the supernatural must be invoked to explain even the most trivial and commonplace of scientific matters, then, no science is possible.

(In this context recall that a textbook on chemistry approved by the Pakistani government not that many years back had the phrase "if Allah wills" inserted in an explanation of how two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen combine to make water.)

Overall the report makes clear that while Arab-Muslim states can and do exploit the science and technology developed elsewhere, there is little if any indigenous capacity to add to the sum total of either technology or science now or in the near term future. The corollary of this is that the states and people of the Arab-Muslim world will continue to be dependent upon others for any and all improvements in their quality of material life. It also implies that any Muslim who somehow escapes the stultifying atmosphere of Muslim education must leave the Muslim world in order to put talents and abilities to work.

There are other implications as well. Implications that the UN folks did not bother to consider.

One implication is the appeal of Islamism to members of the better educated segment of the Arab-Muslim population. There is little if any real, meaningful future open to a young man with a first class education and a better than simply mediocre mind in the Arab-Muslim environment of today. At the same time there is a strong probability that such an individual would perceive himself to be alienated from and unwelcome in the Western countries where his education, talents, and character might find ample reward.

Most, if not all, of the "martyrdom seekers" in recent years have been young men adrift between the promises of the West and the seductive certainties of Islam. They have been individuals of good education, economically comfortable backgrounds, and seemingly of a promising future. At the same time they have seen themselves as having been estranged from the cultural heritage of Islam.

This gap, particularly the loss of the reassuring certainties which so fill the pages of Islam, provided the easily exploited vulnerability of these men to the blandishments of radical clerics. These men of the Koran could and did easily promise the rewards of total uniting with Allah in the gardens of paradise. Given the uncertainties of life which presented themselves to these men of both sensitivity and belief, it is scarcely surprising that they resolved their internal dilemmas in favor of immortality through suicide, paradise by way of murder.

Another implication concerns the stability of states such as Pakistan. To consider this critical country, it is necessary to take a good, hard look at its public education system. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, the lack of a respectable, effective public educational system available to the majority of Pakistani citizens.

Space prevents a detailed account of the failed Pakistani public school system. (Also, the Geek, unlike most Americans, is bored by statistics and considers them to be a bane.) There are three educational systems in Pakistan: the private schools (many of them world class) which are available to the elite only, the madrases which provide much indoctrination in Islamic ideology but little else, and the public schools.

The public schools are the option preferred by the majority of Pakistani families. These do provide somewhat more of an education than do the exclusively religious institutes. The problem comes in the simple fact that the majority of public schools either do not exist (locally they are known as "ghost" schools) or are ineptly staffed, or starved of equipment and supplies.

(Along this line consider the remarkable absence of casualties amidst all the school bombings conducted by Taliban. Lots of buildings destroyed, but no one killed. What is this, Taliban is suddenly concerned with conducting humane, low fatality war? Since when? No, most of the buildings hit are "ghost" schools. This impression is borne out by close examination of images of the damage. No desks, no blackboards, none of the usual impedimenta common to schools everywhere, even the Third World.)

India made the choice years ago to invest heavily in human capital development with a real heavy emphasis on education. Pakistan chose instead to invest heavily in military capital. The strategic impact of these diverse choices is quite evident today as one compares the Indian and Pakistani economies.

The current maldistribution of educational potential in Pakistan serves the needs of the indigenous elite. It serves their short term requirements for stability and regime maintenance. It has assured that the children of today's elite is guaranteed to be the elite of tomorrow. At the same time the use of "ghost" schools assures sufficient graft, corruption, and bribery to secure support in the hinterlands while placating the Islamists by making sure there are sufficient students for the madrases.

Short term, this approach has been win-win for the elite of the country. It has been tacitly approved by the US. We have been aware for years of the inherently destabilizing potential of the educational system, but have held our peace. We have poured money into Pakistan's military capital development without any more than pro forma hints that human capital development is the better option.

Long term stability in Pakistan will come if and only if the country puts an effort into genuine education. The US must support this seismic shift in Pakistani policy. It is in our interests as well as theirs that the money, manpower, and brainpower be shifted increasingly from gun toting to intellect building.

Gun toting buys short term order. It does not and cannot buy long term stability. Education brings little if any short-term benefits, but it does result in long-term improvements. The problem lies in that education takes years, decades, even generations to bear fruit. And, governments live by days, weeks, or, sometimes, months. They demand results right, bloody now!

It may be too late already for Pakistan as it is for Afghanistan, Yemen, and other Islamist jihadist hot zones. The question that must be asked--and answered--is it too late for the rest of the Arab-Muslim world?

The Geek would like to be an optimist. It was his optimism which drove him from the government to academia. But, he is first and foremost a realist. So, his hot wash answer is a resounding, "Yes!" Yes, it is too late for any of the Arab-Muslim states and the majority of their populations.

The reason is simple, blunt and (to Islamists) unpleasant. Islam is both anti-education and anti-freedom. Islam has little if any use for the real world of human beings, their lives, loves, hopes, fears. It focuses instead on two unrealities: paradise after the Day of Judgement, and, the presumed Utopia of the Arabian Peninsula nearly fifteen hundred years ago.

Education and freedom both insist on the importance of life now. Both also see that the human condition has far more potential than that which existed among a flea bitten collection of semi-nomadic herdsmen and occasional traders in a remote area of the Earth far in our past.