Curriculum reform [Archives:2007/1050/Opinion]
By: Mohammed Al-Qadhi
Last week, the department of English at the faculty of languages, Sana'a University, kicked off a workshop on curriculum adjustment and reform. people in charge of the department and the faculty underscored the necessity of upgrading the curriculum so that they can send off graduates with necessary skills and qualifications that meet the market need. In addition, Faculty of Media, at Sana'a University, is also carrying out an overhauling reform to its curriculum with the support from the Danish, Dutch, and British governments.
I understand such projects are touching our pains and real problems. This is because the existing university curricula are very much outdated and do not reflect students and market's needs.
As a matter of fact, part of the problem of our backsliding educational level both at the schools and the universities is the out-of-date curricula which are theoretically oriented and produce students with either knowledge or skills not both. For instance, most of the students of the media college graduate without the basic skills of news story writing, let alone the use of the computer and the internet.
To your knowledge, once I asked some media graduates to write me news stories, I was astonished when they said that they could not type their reports or send them by e-mail. More worse, one of them told me that he had a computer at home but he has never touched it or had an email address.
You see, this is part of the plight of theory-oriented education. I remember when I was a student, we had a course on educational methods which covers the use of overhead projector and others. We were shown the overhead projector but we never operated or worked on it. We were given handouts on how it works to memorize like parrots and then reproduce during the exams.
It is shame that university students at present time do not know how to start a computer set or use the internet. In some European countries, people are now considering the internet something old and are talking and debating about the future of mobile technology.
Certainly, it is a very wide gap which we need a lot of time and effort to bridge. Some would argue we do not have enough financial resources to run such programs. But, I would say we do have. If the government, for instance, channeled the budget of the al-Saleh grand mosque being constructed in Sana'a to renovate the educational system of the universalities, it could have done something tangible and improved the miserable situation of our universities.
I believe our universities have to revisit their curricula every now and then to cope up with the developments and changes in the field of education. They need to upgrade them so that our graduates do not go hanging around in the streets unable to pick up jobs which, of course, require certain skills. I guess the ministry of higher education is currently carrying out a higher education reform strategy which I hope it will hit the nil on the head.
Every now and then, our president shrugs his shoulder in the pride that he has now seven universities. Okay, that is fine. But, are they functioning professionally and graduating the competent people that the business market needs? This is the question which i hope to be answered!
Mohammed Al-Qadhi ([email protected]) is a Yemeni journalist and columnist.
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[archive-e:1050-v:15-y:2007-d:2007-05-14-p:opinion]
