The World is Learning from the Middle East

As an education correspondent based in the United States, I tend to view things through my experience here. However, I am increasingly aware of the positive trends taking place in the Middle East. I believe there is much that the Americas and Europe can learn from the very progressive education systems and Ministries in your area of the world.

In a recent article on Edarabia, I read that the number of women enrolling in computer science and engineering in Middle Eastern universities is close to 50 percent. In the United States, our numbers are considerably lower. Here, we tend to lose girls to science and engineering in the seventh grade, or around the age of 12. Perhaps it is cultural, but social pressures steer our girls away from the sciences and into other fields of interest. In the Unites States alone, there are currently an estimated four million science and technology jobs that are going unfilled. We need to learn more about your culture to understand why your girls are choosing science and ours are not.

I recently attended an innovation and technology competition for university students here called The Imagine Cup. While covering the competition, I had the opportunity to interview an Emirati student named Abdulrahman bin Haider. His project in the Imagine Cup competition, Green Jam, will create automated public recycling stations that reward users for recycling. Abdulraham and his teammates represent the best and brightest of the world’s young people and help us to understand and embrace the talent that is found in the American University of Dubai and other leading universities throughout the Middle East. Currently, only about two percent of our students studying abroad attend university in the Middle East, while over half attend university in Europe. I hope that competitions like the Imagine Cup help our young people understand the quality of your higher education institutions. One of the best ways for the United States to learn from your education systems is to experience them first-hand.

I welcome you to experience some of our education media in the United States. One site I would recommend is edCircuit. You’ll find a lot of helpful articles from some of the brightest education minds in North America. As I continue my work, I’ll bring you stories from educators, school administrators and universities in the United States and Canada. I’ll also work very hard to introduce our education community here to the interesting work going on in your schools and universities. I look forward to learning from your education thought leaders, and in turn, sharing what we know with you. It sounds like the basis for a very fine friendship.