Civil education and the new generations [Archives:2003/675/Community]

Hassan Al-Zaidi
Raising new generations to believe in democratic rights and freedom is of the most essential missions in life, because it is the new generations who are hoped to face the rapid challenges of today's life and adapt to the needs of development. This concept was understood by many active civil societies who work continuously on the civil education of the youth one way or the other. And this was the reason behind a 2-day workshop concluded last week which was organized by the Women's Forum for Research and Training in cooperation with the Canadian Program.
Ms. Suad al-Qadasi Head of the Forum in her welcoming speech emphasized on the importance of civilian education, and its role in bringing up a generation capable of keeping pace with speedy changeables in the world. She also explained a number of definitions that are regularly found in the world's vocabulary such as globalization, unemployment, identity, discrimination tc.
This very issue is not only the concern of the civil societies; Ms. Amat al-Aleem al-Sosowa Human Rights Minister who attended the workshop had made it clear that training on and spreading human rights knowledge was actually the first step in achieving them, for awareness of rights leads to protecting them so that the world to live in peace and order with others. “It is our hope that human rights principles are planted in the society's behavior” she said.
Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Abdulaziz bin Habtour also participated in the workshop said such an activity was to be considered as a serious contribution to this field and to help us develop concepts of education, citing the Ministry of Education support for the event.
He reviewed a number of figures which posed as challenges against development, especially that of women where the percentage of girls enrolled in schools were between 6 and 14 years old is only 46.7%, girls in the primary education are barely above 30% of the female population and still 50% of those drop out of school for various reasons. The situation gets worse as education level grows higher where girls enrolled in secondary education levels are as small as 9% of the female population.
It's not only about concepts, it's about awareness and education, in order to achieve democratic citizenship; the citizens must be aware about and know that they can. This was the main angle of the working papers presented in the workshop by a number of intellectuals and concerned professors. The idea is to engrave freedom concepts on the body of this society, start up new syllabus that emphasize on this kind of education in order to produce better generations, more aware, more free and more able.
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