By Abdulilah
Before I start this piece I would like to congratulate those students who passed the recent rounds of the high school matriculation exams, better known as the Tawjihi exams in Jordan.
To those that did not pass take heart, for one you are not alone and not the first to not pass the first go around. Further; do not be discouraged because for someone like myself who has the privilege to hire many newly recent graduates of the present day university curriculum, I can tell you they do not bring much to the table as would a well-trained technical high school graduate especially in the some of the science, engineering and technology fields today.
Lastly; because you didnot pass this outdated torture test of pure memorization and aping exam, it is my understanding the new rules now allowed you to review and take those subjects that you failed over again.
In any case whatever you do, do not give up hope in your dreams, because I would rather hire one individual who is passionate and committed to his desired field, who has taken the time to actually put his mind and hands on the very objects that he professes to have knowledge in, and of, than one hundred university graduates who can ape really well what they are taught, but have never touched, played, and experimented with, or failed in trying to achieve their goals.
You see it is my belief, based on over 30 years’ of experience that today’s university curriculum is outdated. One that was structured for the industrial revolution long past and dead. One that we in Jordan really never went through and never will, but inherited from the British orientalists, our so called transitional protectors.
What we have stopped doing today, is allowing for creativity and some individualistic ideas to flourish within the student body at the university or even in the lower school levels. In fact todays system really attempts to squash this creativity out so it can produce on-time a plethora of graduate robots who are unable to think individually or in teams, communicate ideas clearly and who cannot innovate themselves out of a brown paper bag,let alone tell you what they actually did for the last four or five years pushing paper around to please a defunct tenured professor who has stopped long ago learning new things himself.
Yes you heard me correctly,the enormous impact of the creative process has been squashed to a point where self-esteem and over-all achievement has suffered. In the field of science, we have graduates in electrical engineering who have never really touched a circuit board, wired a house, been to a job site, let alone actually failed or tried to put anything new together on his own.
Many also cannot write a complete report that actually coveys his thoughts, results and recommendations to a client effectively because they have had so little humanity courses taught to them, or they took only one or two courses as elective courses between the many science and engineering classes that they got little out of them. This by the way is not limited to electrical engineers but the entire university engineering curriculum. Doctors are no better and technology and computer graduates, are some of the worst.
I have seen many who come with only basic skills and qualities, while some who have completely worked on their own who know so much more, because they never stayed in the box that they were put in, but let their individual desires and creativity take them to places where they experimented and failed, tried again and again, and finally succeeded. And where they teamed up with others who have similar likes and desires and worked in team’s brain storming ideas and bouncing them off of each other.
Universities and Colleges of today are failing our youth.They have allowed this mentality of producing many graduates out on a time table at the expense of allowing creativity to flourish, and hopefully from this, new innovations and ideas. The creative process is not a process by which we have to let go of everything either.
Serious creative accomplishments rely on knowledge, control of materials and command of ideas. Education that involves creativity is really a balance between teaching knowledge, and skills, and encourage innovations that are tied to and here is the key “Cultural” education. That simply means that the universities of today need to bring the present day cultural values, traditions, changes and developments into the process.
This means more humanities and arts as well as allowing in more of the diversity within the day to day lives that the students and the world at large are living in.
Many new educators are being taught today that creativity and cultural education are not actual subjects of the university or lower level educational curriculum, but are more general functions of education, and their promotion needs amethodical strategy.Where the balance of a school’s curriculum, teachers training and development, teaching methods and communication with outside sources, people and the business community is addressed. Where freedom to innovate and take risks are encouraged and not squashed.
In any case I believe you all are pretty sharp and probably already know much of this. The problem however is the lack of effective communication between the business community and the education system.
It is my belief that before any science or engineering and technology student gets his degree or higher learning for that matter, he must have at least one or two semesters of some internship with some participating businesses and public governmental sectors.
That way they will have a working knowledge of what is going on right or wrong with the system they would like to participate in after their graduation,giving them time to think of newer ideas for aiding, promoting, or correcting, good ideas or deficiencies in these systems. This in the hope of possibly making them better in the future. Without this, I fear our educational system and our society at large to some degree is doomed to failure while others who have adopted these newer techniques will pass us by.
God Bless Jordan and its People
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