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| Volume IX, June 2002, Number 2 |
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| EXCERPT: Education in Saudi Arabia: Choices and Constraints |
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| William A. Rugh |
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Ambassador Rugh is president of America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Incorporated.
For centuries, in the territory now called Saudi Arabia, education in the broadest sense has been taking place. As early as the seventh century CE, Islamic "kuttab" schools existed in the Western region (the Hijaz) in or near mosques, presided over by a Muslim preacher. These continued and spread, and some admitted girls as well as boys, either in separate locations or, for children under six, together. The function of the kuttab school was to study and memorize the Quran and other religious texts. Rote memorization of basic texts continues to be a central feature of much of the educational system of Saudi Arabia even today and can be traced back to the approach in the kuttab school. During the period of Ottoman rule in the Hijaz, government schools offered six years of education that included geography, history and even art in addition to religion, but courses were taught in Turkish. Many parents refused to send their children to these schools fearing they would be conscripted into the Ottoman army. They were also not satisfied with the limited education provided by the kuttab schools. In the ninth century, therefore, Hijazi merchants established private schools in Jidda, Mecca and Medina that offered a wider range of subjects in Arabic.1
Government control, one major feature of Saudi education, started early and has continued to this day. In 1925, shortly after Abdulaziz al Saud had unified the country, he established a Directorate of Education and created government schools. At that time the four private schools in the Hijaz were put under supervision of the Directorate. In 1938, the Directorate issued regulations confirming that it had control over all educational matters in the kingdom except for the military academies. In 1953, the Directorate became the Ministry of Education, and Prince Fahd (later king) bin Abdulaziz was the first minister. The structure created in 1925 offered six years of elementary and five years of secondary schooling. By 1958, the government had formally changed that structure to conform with standards elsewhere in the region: a 6-year elementary school, intermediate and secondary schools of 3 years each, followed by a separate higher education function.2
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1 Hamad I. Al Salloum, Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission to the United States, Education in Saudi Arabia (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1995), 2nd edition, pp. 7-8. (An earlier and longer version of this study, in Arabic, was published in 1988 under the title "Al Taleem al Aam fil Mamlaka al Arabia al Saudia") Examples of early private schools were the Solatia, Fakria, Fallah and Khairia schools, all closed in 1961. I am grateful to Dr. Kevin Taecker, Dr. Abid Gama and others who prefer to remain anonymous, for help in preparing this article.
2 Ibid., pp. 9-11.
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