Al-Ihya_Al-Arabi [Archives:2003/665/Press Review]

August 30 2003
Main headlines:
– Death sentence for the killer of students in Yahar
– Al-Azhar issues a fatwa prohibiting dealing with Iraqi governing council
– Armed man kills and injures around 45 persons in Sheikh al-Ahmar hometown
Columnist Abdulla al-Izzi A'mer says in an article at the time we receiving the new academic year we come to know that the ministry of education is going to implement the '' educational workshop'' which usually causes confusion to the educational process due to transfer of teachers and administrative officials, a process sometimes goes on throughout the entire academic year. The new thing this year is that the announcement about the workshop is claimed to be approved by higher official ranks, perhaps the premiership. Looking into justifications and criteria to which the process reclines, under allegation of redistribution of educational workforce, it could be found out that the matter is no different than the usual habit of the ministry, as the new workshop has nothing to do for rectifying the undisciplined situation. My hope was that the minister of education should have realized that the failure does not lie in the many schools in the countryside or the intensive number of non-specialized teachers but rather the non-existence of a true vision by the ministry for qualifying these teachers inside the universities especially the scientific specialties that have always represented a deficit in the past years. The latter measure, if implemented, it would have led to decreasing the presently surplus cadre and solving the standing need for specialized teachers especially for the advanced classes in the secondary schools.
The second cause of the failure is that there are administrative elements that climbed to leading schools through illegal means but could be tackled by replacing them by qualified and decent elements.
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