Transformation of education: will it lead to integration?

• Author: Inati, Shams C.

This essay is intended to show that the Lebanese government's criticism of the Lebanese educational system that was in existence from 1968 to 1994 is not fully justified and cannot, therefore, serve as grounds for making the basic changes in it that have been made; and that these recent changes, though they may be good in part, will not lead to the goal of individual and social integration.

Most discussions about Lebanon focus on areas such as politics, economics, sectarianism, and the environment. Education does not usually feature in such discussions. Education must not be forgotten, however. It is the making of a country, since it is the making of its future generations. I take it the term "transformation" is clear enough. Before we discuss whether the transformation of education in Lebanon today will lead to integration, however, it is appropriate to identify the terms "education" and "integration," and to set the background that has led to the very recent transformation of the Lebanese educational system.

By "education" I mean the process of developing the moral, intellectual, emotional, or physical potentialities of an individual or of society. Of course, good education requires the development of such potentialities in ways suitable to this well-being. But the development of any or all of these potentialities is not sufficient, though necessary, to create individual and social well-being. Integration of all such developed potentialities is also required. By "integration," I understand allowing the moral, intellectual, emotional, and physical potentialities on individual and social levels to work harmoniously with each other. In other words, in integration there is always a diversity of elements that work harmoniously together. This is what Plato would call "justice," where the various faculties and various players fulfill their specific roles without overpowering or impeding the roles of the other faculties and other players.(1) However, it would seem that the best type of integration is that which allows the working together, not of just any variety of individual and social elements, but only of those elements that are conducive to individual and social well-being.

We should keep in mind, therefore, that not all integration is desirable, only that which enhances as much as possible the well-being of the part and of the whole in society through integrating the developed moral, intellectual, emotional, and physical potentialities in the most constructive way possible. The ultimate objective of education must be to bring about the well-being of individuals and society through this best kind of integration. Of course, absolute integration in this sense is probably impossible to obtain in any individual or social setting. There are always natural and genetic elements that resist any educational efforts and stand in the way of such integration. The best one can hope for is a relatively high degree of desirable integration. The issue before us now is this. Did the old educational system that has been applied until recently in Lebanon suffer from problems that stood in the way of this type of integration and, hence of individual and social well-being in Lebanon, necessitating thereby the transformation of this system?

HISTORY AND RESPONSIBILITY

In trying to assess the causes of the most recent Lebanese civil war, some people place the blame, in part or in whole, on the Lebanese educational system. Their main claim is that, by giving the various religious sects the right to have their own private schools, the system gave those sects the ability to destroy the identity of the Lebanese and, hence, their integration, owing to the fact that certain religious sects taught in their schools materials contradictory to those taught by other religious sects.

To go back in history, it is true that, as early as 1535, Sultan Sulayman (r. 1520-1566) gave the French community in Lebanon the right to have its own schools and to have control over those schools. Certain Christian communities then received the same right. The story of the missionaries who arrived in Lebanon in the nineteenth century and brought their schools with them is well known. What we now call the American University of Beirut was established by the Presbyterians in 1866 under the name Syrian Protestant College. The French Jesuits established Saint Joseph University in 1887. In 1888 the local Sunnis founded al-Maqasid. The Shi'ites opened their schools in 1910. The mandate gave the various religious communities the right to have their schools. The Constitution of the First Republic in 1926 confirmed these rights, on condition, first, that these communities abide by government regulations regarding education; second, that they not infringe on the rights of other communities; and third, that they not disturb the moral and public order.(2) These rights were reasserted in 1946 and preserved when the educational system was revised in 1968.

Now we can address the question whether these rights in themselves are responsible for destroying the identity and integration of the Lebanese. In other words, are we to blame the educational system for the disintegration of Lebanese society just because this system gave the Lebanese communities the freedom to open private religious schools? It would seem that the blame for the disintegration of Lebanese society must not be placed on these rights in themselves, but in part on the fact that these communities did not have the foresight and sense of responsibility to prevent their schools from plunging the country into the disintegration and destruction it witnessed. In their schools, these communities misused education and taught materials that were essentially different, if not contradictory. This was the case especially in the fields of history and language, the two areas that could either bring people together or distance them from each other. Some communities, for example, stress in their schools, whether directly or indirectly, the idea that the Lebanese are Arabs and must be proud of their Arabic language. Others stress the opposite, that the Lebanese are non-Arabs, and so perhaps a language like French is more befitting to their linkage to the West and to their special "non-Arab" status in the region.

With time, the gaps among these communities (whether religious or secular, native or foreign) grew wider and wider. Furthermore, to create what they referred to as a "balance," communities made an effort to strengthen their private schools and the curriculum in those schools. This effort widened the gap even further, something which, to a great extent, was responsible for what looks like the total disintegration of Lebanese society, thus the tragedy of 1975.

What in a sense helped fulfill the interests of these communities was the fact that the government had no supervision over the private schools and did not begin establishing public schools to counterbalance the teachings of the private ones until quite late. For example, the Lebanese State University was opened almost 100 years after the American University of Beirut had been established. The former was opened in 1951 and did not begin to operate properly until 1959. Moreover, even when public schools were opened, they remained much weaker than the private ones and primarily hosted students from financially poor sectors. Also, one of the most essential stages of education, preschool education, remained limited to private schools until 1971. And even then public schools devoted only two years to this stage of education, whereas private schools devoted three.(3)

Thus the government, too, was to a large extent responsible for the disintegration and tragedy by its lack of supervision and slowness in attempting to introduce public balanced views, not by the mere fact that it entitled religious sects to have private schools. To blame the government or the educational system in Lebanon for giving the religious communities the right to open private schools is like blaming God for giving human beings freedom just because certain people commit certain sins. In the United States, religious communities have the right to have private religious schools. For example, the Catholic Augustinian order was given the right in 1842 to open and manage Villanova University. But this did not entitle the Augustinians to turn Villanova into a...