Trajectories of Education in the Arab World: Legacies and Challenges * Edited by OSAMA ABI-MERSHED

Abstract

This volume is an outcome of two conferences organized by Georgetown University in 2006–7, in response to the completion of the first series of the UN Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) in 2005 (UNDP, 2002–5). The Report examined critical deficits in ‘knowledge, freedom and women’s empowerment’ in the Arab world 2002. The AHDRs focused on the unequal standards of education in Arab countries and their relation to the developmental lags compared to the rest of the world. These observations prompted the international conferences to examine past and ongoing Arab educational initiatives. The first was called ‘The Politics of Education in the Arab World’; the second, held in Doha (2007), examined ‘Education and Change in Qatar and the Arab World’. The various contributors to the volume show how initiatives to transform education in the Arab world are heavily influenced by global, post-Cold War political and economic structures. The initiatives are modulated by local definitions of useful knowledge as well as the rules of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the global economy.