Composition & Essay Writing . [ 29 }

29- ] Composition & Essay Writing .

25-] Education In Egypt And How To Develop It.

                Egypt has made tremendous advances in expanding education over the last decades . Gross enrollment rates for both boys and girls steadily increased at every level of schooling showing particularly strong performance in basic education in recent years . Today 80% of   school-age students are enrolled in primary school and 68 % are enrolled in secondary school . Adult literacy increased from 26 % in 1960 to over 51 % in 1995 . Since 1980 girls’ enrollment rates in secondary as well as primary schools have been increasing rapidly and are now approaching enrollment of boys .

             The rapid expansion of access to education has been accomplished at the expense of education quality . Demographic pressures and increasingly strained resources resulted in the physical disrepair of many primary schools, overcrowded classrooms and poor teacher morale   and motivation in the face of low salaries.As a result despite substantial investment in education , learning outcomes have been disappearing .

              As a result of Egypt’s constitutional guarantee of free education at all levels has become a false entitlement, especially for the poor. From 1980/ 81 to 1990 / 91 education costs for the poor increased by roughly 7 times in urban areas and 10 times in rural areas , compared to 3 and 6 times respectively for the middle and higher income .

                  Education makes labor more productive and facilitates innovation and technological progress bringing higher economic growth . Cross-country analysis indicates that education contributes to growth.Why isn’t this process working well in Egypt ? Why is Egypt’s investment yielding low and skewed economic returns ?  Three problems explain this   1-] The supply side . There are many signs that the quality of schooling especially provided by the public sector is       low in Egypt and has probably fallen in the last two decades .

      The two other problems arise on the demand side : the link between the demand for skills in  the labor market and education’s contribution to growth. Educational expansion gas not been translated into higher productivity and income due to the lack of link between education and      labor.Education does not supply skilled workers . Until recently overall economic policy has not been market-led . As in many developing countries there is a mismatch between Egypt’s labor market realities and its institutions .

                    The dawn of the 1990s found Egypt facing serious problems in education – problems compounded by low literacy rates and exploding population. Educational quality particularly in basic education and in technical and vocational education had seriously declined . Increasing numbers of graduates were unemployable and virtually untrainable . The curriculum was generally irrelevant to the students . School quality was uneven with better quality schools in urban areas where the wealthy could pay for tutoring . Teachers lacked training in pedagogy . Learning conducted with martial drill and physical punishment , encouraged tote memorization rather than critical thinking . Chronic teacher shortages especially in rural primary schools resulted from low prestige , low pay and migration of teachers to better jobs in other countries .

                       In 1985 – 1986 nearly 155.000 primary and secondary teachers served 9.6 million people , a ratio about 62 students per teacher . An over-abundance of administrators depleted salary budgets . Serious underfunding was reflected in deteriorating buildings , overcrowded schools and classrooms , poor or absent libraries and lack of technology . Some city schools operated two and even three shifts daily. Most secondary schools lacked scientific laboratory      and computer equipment . Comprehensive educational planning tying educational programs      and output to national needs was lacking . A serious mismatch between supply and demand produced incomplete degree-holders in unwanted subjects . Unemployment was high . Almost    half of the students did not complete the basic school . Dropout and grade repelling rates were  high .

 Against this backdrop , massive changes and a sweeping revision of Egypt’s educational system aiming at upgrading, modernizing and transforming education into a coherent continuous educational process are required . The primary and preparatory curricula need to be redesigned  to be more relevant and more scientific with emphasis on experimentation and critical thinking . Texts and teaching manuals must be revised. Kindergarten needs to be designed as a part of the formal system included in the comprehensive planning. Gender and rural / urban inequities and illiteracy need to be addressed with special rural programs targeting girls programs designed to   be flexible and relevant to local needs .

                 To improve quality of the teaching staff , pre-service and in-service training must be revised and performance-related [ merit ] pay and changes in the educational standards of supervisors and inspectors must be instituted .

                        Egypt’s educational system’s weakness and problems must be recognized and addressed actually as there is a vast difference between idealized plans and implementation .          A system short on resources , stifled by bureaucracy and lacking in local expertise moves slowly . Egypt has a long expensive road to travel given the enormity of illiteracy and vast educational shortages . To reform there is a demand for effective schooling that increases labor productivity . Egypt has made progress in expanding education , but alone it does not generate economic  benefits. There must be matching of supply and demand. Education must be of reasonable    quality .

 

26-] Globalization .

                     The United Nations has written that globalization is a widely used term that can be defined in a number of different ways. It can be described as a process by which the people of      the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic , technological , sociocultural and political forces . It is often used to refer to economic globalization that is integration of national economics into the international economy through trade , foreign direct investment , capital flows , migration and the spread of technology .

Noam Chomsky argues that the word globalization is also used in a doctrinal sense to describe    the neoliberal form of economic globalization. The term globalization has been used by   economists since the 1980s , although it was used in social sciences in the 1960s , however its concepts did not become popular until the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s.

                     Cultural globalization driven by communication technology and the worldwide marketing of Western cultural industries was understood at first as a process of homogenization , as the global domination of American culture at the expense of traditional diversity . However ,     a contrasting trend soon became evident in the emergence of movements protesting against globalization and giving new momentum to the defense of local uniqueness , individuality and identity .

                     As globalization is not only an economic phenomenon , a multivariate approach to measuring globalization must be used . The three main dimensions of globalization are economic , social and political . In addition to this an overall index of globalization and sub-indices referring to actual economic flows , economic restrictions , data on personal contact , data on information flows and data on cultural proximity are calculated .

                         Globalization has various aspects which affect the world in several different ways such as industrial , financial , economic , political , informational , linguistic , cultural , ecological , technical , legal / ethical etc. As for the cultural effects , the internet is associated with the process of cultural globalization because it allows interaction and communication between people with different lifestyles and from different cultures .

                          Critics of globalization argue that recent economic globalization increases the income inequality both between and within nations . The poorer countries suffer disadvantages . The main export of  poorer countries is usually agricultural goods . Larger countries subsidize their famers [ like the US and the EU Common Agricultural Policy which lowers the market price for the poor farmer’s crops compared to what it would be under free trade ] . Moreover , the developed countries are advanced in industry and all the other aspects , especially Information Technology . So they have the power over the poor countries and can monopolize every thing as a kind of domination . Movements protesting against globalization have emerged to defend local uniqueness , individuality , ethnical diversity and identity .

                        As a solution the regional organizations between different countries in various aspects, especially the economical and cultural have appeared. Some countries adopted protective measures to limit the effects of globalization . In brief , what the world needs is a kind of fair globalization that regards the interests of all the countries and spreads peace and cooperation and understanding among the peoples of the world as all are human beings and belong to humanity and mankind .