Workshop on Social Science in the Arab World, Turkey and Iran:

Determinants, Status and Potentials

Organized by MEAwards in Collaboration with CERES

Tunisia: 25-26 January 2004

Variation in education systems, diaspora, and reproduction of the intellectual elite

D. Ibrahim Al-Nour

Associate Professor

American University in Cairo

Introduction

Controversy of knowledge production in the region

Development of educational systems

The mechanism of generating pressures in expanding education (Sudan: a case study)

90's Expansion: Jumping over flimsy feet

The crisis of teaching large numbers

From open elitist education to closed elitist education

Human flows and the reproduction of elites and knowledge

New forms of re-election of educated elites

The Arab region and the global context: towards a conclusion

Footnotes

References

Dr. indicated. Atef Ebeid - Prime Minister, in a statement before the People’s Assembly - indicated that “the training centers will rehabilitate 400,000 graduates annually...” Al-Ahram, 12/29/2003

Introduction

My contribution is concerned with the structural foundations of the system of knowledge production and scientific research, including social research. This contribution focuses in particular on the changes in the basic structure of knowledge production, by which I mean the educational system and the changes that have occurred in its composition, policies, or content, in quantity and quality. It also concerns a variable closely linked to the basic structure of knowledge production, which is the role of human flows (population flows) in the region for its various purposes. Migration between countries in the region, between labor-exporting countries and labor-importing countries - and migration to the region from all regions, especially the Asian region - and migration from the region to the north. All of these migrations play an important and influential role on the capabilities of knowledge production, localization and dissemination in the region, both positively and negatively.

These important variables in both the basic structure of knowledge production, its human composition and movement, and the sorting factors among it, have resulted in a new dynamic for the process of knowledge reproduction and the intellectual elites, which, in my estimation, are dynamics that generate new challenges. Understanding these dynamics constitutes the starting point for understanding the path of scientific research and ways to overcome its current shortcomings and challenges.   Despite the specific aspects of the development of the structure of knowledge production and its old and new dynamics in the Arab region, it must be viewed within a broader framework than the regional circle, that is, from a perspective that also includes the changes occurring at the level of the global southern space, and within the framework of the mutual relations between the North and the South in our world and within the framework of increasing globalization and the influences it has produced and is producing.

Controversy of knowledge production in the region

The two Arab Human Development Reports issued in 2002 and 2003 stirred the spirit of life in circles concerned with issues of scientific research and knowledge production. The first report in 2002 was able to contribute to stimulating healthy reactions when it focused on the fact that the challenge of development in the region is to overcome three shortcomings: knowledge, freedom, and women’s empowerment. The second report dealt with the challenges of establishing a knowledge society in Arab countries: production, employment, and dissemination focused on two axes: transforming knowledge wealth into knowledge capital, and employing knowledge capital efficiently in producing new knowledge as two combined, interconnected processes. The first axis is disseminating available knowledge, while the second focuses on direct operations to produce new knowledge in all fields of knowledge: natural and social sciences, humanities, arts, literature, and all types of societal activity, and the efficiency of these two activities requires the establishment of societal institutions to achieve their purposes. The movement of institutions over time, active and effective societal processes that arise in a national, regional and global context in which they are implemented (Arab Human Development Reports 2002, 2003). 2002,2003

I took the report as an entry point for my contribution, not because of the intention to enter into a dialogue with what it reached or what it touched upon, but rather because of the importance of what the report did not pay sufficient attention to. The report focused largely on issues of measuring knowledge. Naturally, education, its system, and its quality play the important role in knowledge production capabilities. Naturally, the elements of education (system, quality, policies) play an important role in determining its dynamism and the direction of reproduction of these knowledge capabilities. The report also briefly touched on a basic element that has a distinct impact on knowledge production capabilities in the region, which is its special role. Human flows in the region.

The paper begins by discussing the issues related to the Arab education systems as they are the cornerstone of knowledge production. Then comes a discussion of the distinctive and influential size of human flows in the region and their significant impact on the production, localization or depletion of knowledge in the region, while the penultimate section focuses on the mutual influence of both the factors of the educational system and human flows in creating a new dynamic of knowledge production and the pattern of reproduction of the intellectual elites. This dynamic has influenced and continues to influence the process of knowledge production, dissemination and localization in the region. The last section of the paper is concerned with placing the issues of knowledge production in the region within the framework of the changes occurring in the global South as a whole and within the framework of the relations between the South and the North and the trends they have produced and are producing in terms of differences in relative status, convergence and divergence, integration and marginalization. Some aspects of marginalization and decline from the level of knowledge production, as we claim, are due to global conditions that are less conducive to equal exchange in the field of knowledge production imposed by factors related to the historical legacy of knowledge dependency and the new sorting factors that globalization has produced. This approach gains its importance due to the over-definition of the crisis of Arab knowledge production or the “permanent tendency to self-flagellation” that accompanies many contributions in this field.

Development of educational systems

Is it possible to reach any reasonable generalizations when we are talking about an area as diverse and diverse as the study area? Perhaps this is the fundamental question facing anyone who confronts any generalizations. It is enough to look at variables such as income, educational level, and other development indicators to see the enormity of the risk. The situation seems more complicated when we take into account, for example, the divisions based on the export or import of labor, and perhaps other more difficult ones related to the differences in the history of colonial influences, classified according to regions and perhaps countries, as Henry and Springborg rightly noted (Henery and Springborg, 2001: 8-21). In the very significant section that discusses the specificity and diversity of the colonial legacy of the Middle East and North Africa region. However, we argue that some useful generalization is possible and even necessary to see the whole purpose due to mutual influences and historical overlap, both cognitive and material. On the material level, it is sufficient to see that rentierism (which is most characteristic of oil-producing economies) has produced rentier effects in all the economies of non-producing countries. It goes without saying that the mutual influence on the cognitive level does not require further proof. Henery and Springborg, 2001:8-21

Despite the wide historical disparity, and with few exceptions (Lebanon - Palestine), there has been a transition from elitist education based on small numbers and few centers of excellence, a pattern established by colonialism in all Arab countries, east and west. As we mentioned earlier, this transition took place in different historical periods, and Egypt was the first to achieve this transition (in 1952) and was the first to introduce free education (in 1923). However, most of the countries of the region joined the Egyptian model at separate intervals under enormous social pressure from the social groups with an interest in expanding the circle of social mobility, and they are the groups with the loudest voice, as evidenced by the fact that the expansion, especially in non-rich countries, neglected the voiceless groups. Otherwise, how can we explain this expansion with a narrow pyramid base in countries with heavy population and illiterate populations (Sudan - Iraq - Morocco - Egypt - Yemen). Table No. (1) gives a clearer picture of what we mean by this pyramid. These countries represent, on average, about two-thirds of the region's population.

Table No. (1) Illiteracy and higher education in the Middle East and North Africa

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics: World Education Brief 2003: Comparing education statistics across the world, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal 2003. http://www.uis.unesco.org

The mechanism of generating pressures in the expansion of education(Sudan: a case study)

Perhaps the pace of development of the education system in Sudan (which is an extreme case but more clear) can serve to explain the nature of the dynamism generating the direction of expansion in the educational system. It is difficult to understand the distortions and imbalances in the Sudanese educational system without looking at its development patterns and the variation in growth rates between its different sections. It took Sudan nearly two decades after independence to increase its enrollment rate at the basic level from 25% to 50%. For the next two decades, the rate of increase in enrollment was barely equal to the population growth rate, leaving half of Sudan’s children without education. Table No. (2) shows the growth rates in admission to the different stages of education and the absorption rates of the age group corresponding to each stage in the period from 1970 to 1995.

Table No. (2) Growth rates, intake rates at stages of the educational system, and spending on education

Sources:

 (1)Donors to African Education: A Statistical Profile in Sub-Sahara Africa in the 1980s

(2) Central Bureau of Statistics: Statistical Yearbook, Khartoum, 1998.

(3) Central Bureau of Statistics: Population Census for the year 1993, Khartoum, 1996.

However, the importance of the table stems from the fact that it clearly shows the type of pressures generated by the patterns of expansion at different stages and the sources of the increasing social demand for higher education. Each cycle of unbalanced expansion in post-basic education creates an increasing demand for higher education. This leads to what is called in the language of economics “supply-driven expansion, not demand.” If we look at the cycles of expansion in secondary education (the seventies and eighties), where enrollment growth rates were almost double those in the basic stage, we find that enormous pressures arose due to this rapid growth in secondary school graduates, which led to a similar growth in enrollment in post-secondary education, but at a lower pace.

In fact, government institutions of university education have maintained a strict policy of maintaining the selective nature of admission. However, there are two factors that have played an important role in the growth in enrollment rates in post-secondary education:

(1)   An internal factor, as Egyptian higher education (Cairo University, Khartoum Branch) played a major role in raising enrollment rates in post-secondary education. In 1969/1970, students in the branch represented 44.8% of the total university students of 11,437, and in 1982 this number reached 55.7% of the total university students, including the universities of Gezira and Juba, which were established in 1978. (Ibrahim, 1999) Until the end of the 1980s, the admission rate to universities in Egypt exceeded two thousand students annually (Forojalla, 1992). However, the importance of Cairo University, Khartoum Branch, also lies in the fact that it represented a pattern completely different from the higher education system in Sudan, which is the pattern of large numbers and low cost, which appears to be the pattern towards which higher education in Sudan began to move since 1990.

(2)  An external factor that also played an effective role in absorbing the pressures of social demand for higher education, which is the grants and scholarships provided by former socialist countries and Arab countries at the university education level and from Western countries and Western organizations at the post-university education level. Even after the number of these scholarships declined at the end of the 1970s, the momentum of higher education outside Sudan was maintained.

In one way or another, the pattern of “reproduction of the elite” has been repeated in most developing countries. It is a pattern, as we have seen, that generates increasing political and social pressures internally, but its external feeding factors cannot be ignored, including the policies of donors from international or national organizations. So, elements of imbalance and distortions have already existed in the structure of the educational system and its growth rates since independence, and the measures that took place after 1989 were to push the unbalanced growth rates to their maximum extent.

90's Expansion: Jumping over flimsy feet

Within the framework of what was known as the higher education revolution, admission rates to public universities multiplied fivefold if we take into account the transformation of students from Cairo University, Khartoum Branch, into public university students, and admission to private education rose from 993 in 1989/90 to 7,340 male and female students in 1996/95 (meaning that its relative share rose from about 16% of the annual intake to 22%), and in just four years from 1990 to 1994 18 new public universities were established and in the same period 12 higher education institutions were established at the initiative of the private sector.

These numbers - in addition to being tedious - may seem insignificant, but they may have gained a real dimension if we know that doubling the number of university students from 60,000 in 1989 to 130,000 in 1995, then reaching 201,000 in 2001, which took place in Sudan, took 45 years in a country like Britain.

Educational economist Atkinson, speaking about this rapid development, wrote: “In addition, other areas of education that are very expensive have grown rapidly, and thus the number of fully enrolled students in British universities has increased from 46,000 students to approximately 139,000 students in the period from 1921 to 1956” (Atkinson, 1993, p. 21).

The crisis of teaching large numbers

The expansion of absorption rates in higher education in Sudan (1990-1996) was characterized by two unique phenomena: a very short time frame accompanied by a decline in relative and absolute spending on higher education, two phenomena that seem to be unique to Sudan. As Table 2 shows, the absorption rate in higher education has doubled between two and three times over a period not exceeding two decades (between 1980 and 2000), which once again confirms the mechanism of generating pressures.

Table No. (3) Higher education admission rates for the blind category in the period 1980-2000

The phenomenon of the swelling numbers of graduates exceeding the rate of growth of the modern service sector is a phenomenon shared by most developing countries, and it does not seem that its results will be different from what happened in other countries. However, it can be said that the rate of expansion that occurred in the Middle East region is much higher than what happened in other similar regions, and it is also an expansion that takes place on a very atrophied educational base and without the appropriate capabilities, whether material or human.  We can determine, without much difficulty, that the typical reaction described by Dore (1976) will be repeated in one form or another. The Dur scenario can be reconstructed to include the following stages: Due to the excess supply of those with university qualifications, a process will begin to replace those with minimum qualifications (high school graduates) with university graduates, and because of “unemployment,” one of the survival strategies will be to continue “post-university” education, which will complete the infernal circle of “excess qualifications - raising the educational minimum for modern sector jobs - increasing post-university qualification in the context of competition - raising the educational minimum required for modern sector jobs... and so on. It goes without saying that survival strategies are not limited to seeking post-university education, but rather include joining the informal market.” Perhaps occupying jobs that are not related to any organized training. The list of government responses to the crisis of employing surplus graduates includes various forms, from a waiting period (five years in Egypt) to compulsory service systems (two years in Morocco)...etc. (see, for example, Solami, 1992). Dore, 1976

It is clear that there is no alignment between training and development needs. Higher education institutions are currently producing increasing numbers that exceed many times the actual demand, and those who are absorbed by the labor market are discovering that their training is not positively compatible with the nature of the work they do.  The most dangerous issue in the coming years will not be the issue of the minority being absorbed by the labor market, as they will be retrained for the requirements of their jobs in one way or another, but it will be the issue of the majority that cannot be absorbed in the limited labor market and does not have the necessary skills to work outside the traditional pattern of the previous elite reproduction system (higher education - guaranteed jobs - an expanding state) [4].

The transition from elite education to educating large numbers, due to the generation of the pressure mechanism that was previously mentioned, was accompanied by a severe deterioration in the levels of higher education, especially in countries that are no longer able to reproduce distinguished elites due to the atrophy of the resources allocated to external training. Dr. sums up the issue. Saad Eddin Ibrahim (Pressures for a university degree, not higher education) have led many countries in the Arab world to rapidly expand the number and size of colleges and universities at a pace faster than their ability to supply these colleges with qualified professors, especially those trained abroad. To meet this shortage, local educational institutions, which already suffer from a shortage of qualified people, have begun granting doctoral degrees to individuals who are poorly educated and poorly trained and who almost do not know either foreign languages ​​or research methods, let alone be proficient in either of them. It is natural for it to repeat the situation of reproducing mediocrity: this blatant weakness of social research in the Arab world” (Ibrahim, 2000: 130). Ibrahim,2000:130

The basic issue, as the eminent scholar Hamid Ammar (1996) reminds us, is not the deterioration in the levels of the final output of this unpaid quantitative expansion, if the phrase is correct, but rather the change in the function of the university or higher education as a result of this change in the method of reproducing educated elites. Ammar monitors the historical role of the elite Egyptian university and its social employment in the 1930s and 1940s, when the thought of enlightenment, modernization, and rationality began, comparing that to what happened under the policies of large numbers and meager preparation. “We do not want to separate the outcomes of learning and teaching in our universities, as it is known that they produce programmed people who influence the culture of memory in a banking manner, according to Paolo Ferrari. For them, science is a subject of preservation and not a method of research, experimentation, testing, and deduction, and some knowledge is still covered by clouds of myths and superstitious thinking, without deepening the facts and truths, and it is mixed with paths of biases that are not based on evaluating different visions of viewpoints.” (Ammar, 1996, p. 63) 1996 pp.:

“If our universities are remiss in pursuing the production of renewed knowledge and emphasizing merely the rich rationality of knowledge as objective, final, absolute, and valid for every time and place,” they still look at the natural, social, and human sciences in a fragmented manner, and it is rare for physics, chemistry, and mathematics to be linked to an understanding of relationships and conditions, which does not show an influence of the university on its base and its lessons, but rather it has extended outside of it in the various institutions and policies of society, which there is no room for detail in. (Ibid.: p. 63).

From open elitist education to closed elitist education

With the exception of (Lebanon and Jordan) with their own history of education, the oil countries, and the countries that maintained a good level of public education (Tunisia and Turkey), it seems that the reaction to the deterioration in the quality of education of large numbers was, without exception, to create a parallel system of education.

If the crisis of public education - educating large numbers and the accompanying contraction in the last two decades of spending on education and services while continuing to expand enrollment due to population growth and the so-called (population trap), led to the emergence of two vertically parallel systems: private and public. But they are not equal, neither in number of years, nor in year of beginning, nor, of course, in quality. A special system integrated into the world of knowledge at its high level (with varying grades), starting with nursery, then two years of pre-school (Kg2 & Kg1), then the bilingual school, and a majority that starts from impossible conditions for competition (one child begins education three or four years after the other child), then two educated children - germinated in connection. Naturally, there is no room to talk about social mobility, as was the case in the old elitist system that provided opportunities for a number of non-rich people, nor in the system that followed it.

In parallel with the private school system, private university systems emerged (in Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Yemen, and Jordan). Some of these universities (old and new) became the new centers of academic excellence. The following table shows the percentage of private education in the region.

Table No. (4) Private primary education in the Middle East and North Africa for the year 2000-2001

These universities absorbed a portion of private school graduates, while a portion of them joined university education in the North European and American regions or moved within the region, and a limited number of them enrolled in university studies in some Asian countries. The special picture of the new dynamic of the reproduction of educated elites is not complete unless we discuss the effects of human flows in the region on this dynamic and how they have deepened the manifestations of pluralism in the education systems and the reproduction of elites, which we will discuss later.

The new system closed wide doors to social mobility, as it is a socially tight system that accommodates about 5% and at its highest limit (Egypt 8%) according to the relative weight of the able classes. This vertical educational division occurs in most Arab countries (it is true that some of them have begun to join it recently: Syria and Libya), but this division can be described as an impoverishing or poverty-generating division that perpetuates and reproduces all material and cognitive poverty. Studies conducted in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and socially unequal society, such as the United States, show that the educational division based on income disparity leads to the deepening of racial, religious, and class disparities and makes public schools lose their unifying ability. These studies show that school location is an influential factor in the quality of education. All students (whether they are from the middle class or poor) perform worse in schools located in poor environments. While poor students who attend middle-class schools can improve their performance significantly, in general these schools have a large number of middle-class students with normal aspirations, better teachers, students with stronger motivation to study, better financial access, and greater participation of students' families in the school system,[5] (see Weicker & Kahlenberg, 2002). This confirms the validity of the statement of the educational scientist Horace in the late nineteenth century, who viewed the public school as a tool for bridging social differences, but stressed that the public school should be truly public, “educating the poor and the rich under the same roof” (ibid.). Therefore, a new dynamic has emerged for the reproduction of the educated elite, with far-reaching implications for the rules of knowledge production, the conditions for this production, and the degree of its integration or separation from the general fabric of knowledge production. The answer to these questions remains incomplete without presenting the other very important influence in the region, which is the role of human flows in the region in knowledge production, dissemination and localization.

Human flows and the reproduction of elites and knowledge of human flows and the reproduction of elites and knowledge

The Middle East and North Africa region is characterized by an unparalleled level of social population mobility or population flows, perhaps only matched by the incident in North America. These human flows have a “significant” impact on the dynamics and mechanisms of producing educated elites, and the production and localization of knowledge, both negatively and positively. The Human Development Report (2002-2003) did not pay sufficient attention to this important influence on the process of knowledge production in the region, and looking at the group of Middle Eastern and North African countries as a single group is not very useful in this regard due to the multiple forms and directions of population flows. There are countries that export labor within the region and there are countries that import labor and there are human flows from outside the region, and there are flows from the region to outside it, especially in the direction of the European and American North.

Going into the details of these multiple forms of migration goes beyond the tasks of this paper, but the essential point here is that these human flows are close in importance to the building, dissemination and localization of knowledge capabilities, including the dynamics of the reproduction of intellectual elites and their retention or leakage from the importance of the educational system and its developments. These flows raise very vital issues with regard to the production and localization of knowledge and the capabilities of knowledge-exporting countries to compensate for the knowledge drain. It also goes beyond the narrow limits of the positive effects of remittances. cash; Cash transfers are intended to provide immediate compensation for the loss of migrant persons, but they do not give us an idea or indicator to measure the long-term impact of the loss of capabilities on the developments of knowledge production capabilities in the exporting countries. This is an issue that scientific research in the field of migration has not addressed with the necessary scrutiny. Rather, this research has remained concerned with what is apparent and immediate (cash flows) and passing references to (manifestations of skills shortages) in some aspects of economic activity in the exporting countries. However, such an omission is mainly due to the difficulties of measurement, especially when the measurement relates to the immediate long term.

For countries importing skills and competencies, importing cognitive capabilities through importing skills and competencies entails real challenges with regard to localization policies.

Naturally, we can assume that this migration, which is dense in numbers and dense in skill and knowledge, will result in building self-capacities to produce knowledge in the receiving countries, whether directly (education and training for local cadres at all educational levels) and indirectly through contact and on-the-job training. There are not yet serious studies in this field, and there is nothing to suggest that the localization of knowledge production capabilities has taken place in the labor-importing countries. This suffices with the clearest evidence, which is the continued dependence of these countries on importing skills. Naturally (referring to the entry of my talk), these countries have the most direct option before the American model, which is the actual naturalization of these capabilities, that is, for them to become citizens with full rights, and thus the problem of naturalization is solved radically. However, as we know, without that, Al-Qatadad loses not only in terms of identity and cultural purity (and perhaps the one who increases racial purity said), but also because this naturalization may mean accelerating the erosion of the existing social contract in an uncontrollable way, which is a justified fear on the part of the ruling cliques in those countries, which are in In reality, it faces the erosion and fragility of the social contract due to what has been done in the field of catching up with modernity in education, and the accompanying developments, especially in the field of women’s education, and the emergence of middle classes that are much broader than at the beginning of the discovery of oil, not to mention the harsh winds of globalization resulting from scientific progress in the fields of information technology and communications.

The other aspect relates to the brain drain (brain drain) whether inside the region or completely outside it, and here I mean not only immigration to oil countries, but immigration to the North (Europe and America), and for both economic and political reasons... Effects such as the migration shock may not seem very important or prominent in relatively large and politically stable economies such as the case of Egypt, but they are certainly extremely impactful in other economies. Let us think about the brain drain from Algeria - Iraq - Syria - Sudan, as these countries lost to varying degrees. An important part of its living forces that produce and disseminate knowledge to the outside world. These countries, perhaps the most unstable of them (Iraq - Sudan), are now going through what we can truly call the negative construction of knowledge production capabilities and the reproduction of those capabilities. Let me explain this point better. In most of these countries, immigrant talent has been replaced by low-quality talent, leaving an indelible mark for generations to come. The example of Iraq and Sudan is of particular importance as these countries maintained academic excellence at the university level for a long period after independence on a narrow educational basis. In other words, both countries maintained distinguished education and were able to compete globally, but this is precisely what helped these two countries quickly lose their educated elites, and because of the narrow base of these two elites, the impact of their loss seems more severe than any other country in the region.

New forms of re-election of educated elites

Several factors have combined, the most important of which are changes in educational policy, the role of the state, and human flows between, into, and outside the countries of the region, to form a new dynamic for the re-election of the educated elite, and the speed and pace of the effect of these changes, as well as the processes of globalization and the multiple forms of integration, separation, and marginalization among the countries of the region, and within each country individually.

These important changes led to a multiplicity of patterns and centers of knowledge production and scientific research, but when the previous centers of academic excellence atrophied and disappeared, new centers and networks of scientific excellence emerged that distinguished them from the previous ones, an almost complete separation that is exactly similar to the vertical separation that occurred in the educational system from the rest of the educational system. The issue of the emergence of isolated islands (isolated from within and completely connected to the outside) is very important in understanding the dynamics affecting both knowledge production and dissemination, including social research. The importance comes from the perspective of historical comparison between the previous and current centers of scientific excellence. The previous centers of academic excellence were completely integrated into the previous educational system and sat at its top, facilitating the trickle-down effect and a significant amount of mutual interaction with the entire national educational body and an almost organic connection with the world through retraining the elites of excellence.

The new centers of excellence (whether inside these countries in the form of educational institutions or outside them, as is the case in groups of academic excellence in diaspora countries) do not have an organic connection to the general educational system, thus weakening the possibilities of drop-out. Thus, a mass of learners (they are the majority) has emerged, which we describe as “under-privileged groups.” Of course, the picture is not that bleak as imposed by the inflexible restrictions of the grading.

On the one hand, the stages overlap, even when the shift towards a university of large numbers (and limited capabilities) prevailed, some educational policies have targeted the establishment of centers of academic excellence amidst this huge number. There is also the possibility of significant breakthroughs occurring in limited fields and this results from a great concentration of efforts and capabilities in a specific field. Historically, this is what happened in the Soviet experience. The historical breakthroughs in the Soviet Union in the fields of space technology took place without such important breakthroughs spreading to the rest of the body of knowledge and the productive fabric because of what Goldenberg called the inherent brakes in the Soviet system (Goldman, 1983). There are many similar cases, such as the important breakthroughs that took place in long-staple cotton research in both Egypt and Sudan, the Korean case of nuclear production, and if you wish, you can add the Libyan case as well [6].

The bottom line is that we can point to a strategy based not on a general cognitive advancement, but rather on a strong concentration of capabilities in a specific field to achieve a specific breakthrough, which is most likely what does not apply to the rest of the components of the body of knowledge. It is a strategy based on this description that is temporary, but if it becomes a long-term strategy, it must lead to cognitive stagnation, or at least to the spread, intensity, and widening of the knowledge production gap in it. It is possible to imagine the state of knowledge production if such a strategy was applied in a country or region that is trying to overcome marginalization or catch-up.

From here come the recent remarks about how we should read the experience of Asian catch-up, which is an experience that should be read from the Meiji educational revolution in Japan and not through the Asian Tigers. The first steps of Asian catch-up with the Japanese model and the most recent is that the catch-up appeared essentially to be an “educational” catch-up. In 30 years, “Japan was able to surpass Great Britain in early general education and achieve tremendous achievements in the fields of higher education, which is what the Asian Tigers did later. In fact, the link between education Development (modernization more broadly) was linked to attempts by societies that had not yet been industrialized to catch up. For example, the Meiji government in Japan issued the Compulsory Education Law in 1872. It focused its efforts on building the primary structure of society, which is the child, and paid more attention to primary education than to higher education. Hence, we find that the state’s educational policy differed greatly from the policy followed by developing countries later” (Michio and Orita, 1992, p. 173). In fact, Japan was able, as Table 2 shows, to achieve universalization of public education in one period with Britain. Mchio Waorita,

Table No. (4) The development of education in Britain and Japan 1870 - 1970

Source:  Dore, R. 1976, p. 40

In this context, and in a similar vein to Kirshankron in (Historical Dimensions of Underdevelopment), Dor links the degree of relative delay in industrialization and the focus on education as a priority in this triple conditional: The more delayed a country enters the field of development and modernization, the more:

1- The use of educational qualifications as a basis for employment has increased.

2- The rate of qualifications inflation has increased.

3- Educational systems have become increasingly linked to exams at the expense of real education (schooling instead of teaching).

The Asian Tigers later followed the same path as Japan, especially Korea (see, for example, Abdullah, Ismail Sabry, 1995).

The Arab region and the global context: towards a conclusion

It is inevitable to conclude the paper with the introductory question: Is it possible to reach any generalizations when we are talking about an area as diverse and extremely diverse as the study area? The degree of this extreme diversity in the region has been increased by the multiplicity of paths along which education has developed in each individual country. Almost all countries in the region have made huge leaps, especially with regard to quantitative expansion in higher education, and some of them, like Egypt, may have reached the limits of what can be achieved in comparison to the educational base on which quantitative expansion took place. We also saw the varying impact of what we called the brain drain and the capabilities of importing talents and the issues it raises in terms of localization of knowledge, which prevails over the aspects of privacy in addressing the issues of developing, disseminating and localizing knowledge production within the same region. However, the issue of educational reform with its different agenda, including the expansion of its base, aims to address issues related to quality (in its direct sense related to the abilities of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in its broader meaning in which education is consistent with the needs of life, scientific progress, and the skills necessary for a better life), in which it is correct to generalize to the entire region. In this context, the vertical division in the educational system between a small minority concentrated in a distinct system that begins with the pre-school stage and ends with distinguished universities inside or outside the designated country, and an overwhelming “unlucky” majority that rushes through the general educational system from its primary school to the university with large numbers and low preparation, is something that perpetuates the reproduction of material and cognitive poverty. In the coming years, the extent of the effectiveness of any educational reform will depend on the extent of success in bridging the gap between these two vertically opposing systems and in building bridges of mutual influence between them, or on the ability to develop centers of excellence with wide influence within low-quality public education systems and in almost all countries. Although the degrees vary, the ability to maintain retention capacity will be a real challenge, but this ability extends beyond material incentives to include the enabling environment in the broad sense that includes the political and social context. Convenient. The issue of restoring competencies from exile and diaspora will constitute an advanced priority for a number of countries with a significant population size, led by Sudan, Iraq and Algeria. In countries with large financial capabilities, the issue of localizing knowledge production and integrating it into the local context (not continuing to import it) remains the greatest challenge.

All these issues related to the basic structure of knowledge production, dissemination and localization constitute what can be described as the necessary condition for the development of knowledge production. However, the sufficient condition remains linked to the enabling climate, and within its framework the importance of the three shortcomings mentioned in the Arab Human Development Report for the year 2002 can be understood. We add to them a profound factor that contributed to the vitality of knowledge production and the formation of its agenda, which is the existence of a national project, as was the case in the period of struggle against colonialism, and as was the case with the momentum of broad development hopes in the fifties and sixties. Perhaps it is true to say that the fourth shortcoming is the absence of such a national project. So, despite the specificity of the development of knowledge production capabilities in each individual country, what is common seems important and urgent at the same time.

However, the fourth deficiency that we just mentioned, which concerns the absence of a national project, should be viewed within a broader context than the region and framed in the context of globalization processes and the accompanying separation, marginalization, and global integration between the global North and South.

The theoretical framework on which the statements of unequal knowledge exchange are based is based primarily on the statement of the non-neutrality of knowledge, which reflects in one way or another the contributions of both Bourdieu and Habermas, where knowledge is a conditional social act and a symbolic tool for power according to Bourdieu, or the theoretical trilogy based on cognitive interests according to Habermas (Habermas, 1979; Bourdiew & Wacquant, 1979) (Crippe, 1999) and also the broad dialogue about Knowledge production is concentrated in a few centers in the North, while marginal universities act as distributors of the global knowledge production system (Muzrui, 1975), see also a summary of this controversy in Esteve, 1992; Persianis, 2000; crepeOdora, 2000

In this context, the decline in the relative status of knowledge production is an issue that generally applies to the Global South (the Third World, if you will). In his analysis of what he called the distorted path of development of knowledge production in the Third World, Odora (2000) divided this development into three stages: Odora, 200

(1)          The period that followed liberation was characterized by a distinguished production of knowledge, rich in addressing the colonial legacy and imperialism, and was able to produce distinguished achievements in the South in the context of examining issues of dependency and unequal relations between the North and the South.

(2)             The 1980s was dominated by a research agenda based on Reactive Critique, which concerned itself with trying to research the effects of structural adjustment programs and their negative effects.

(3)                 The stage of the 1990s, when the acceleration of globalization processes and the sorting and marginalization that accompanied them were imposed, as they imposed an imposed agenda and separatist starting points on knowledge production in the South, “which distorted the path of knowledge production by Third World researchers into a series of reactions and arguments instead of comprehensive and productive theorizing based on the basic issues related to the localization of development” (previous reference, p. 4).

Odora believes that Marxism (despite its theoretical shortcomings) [7] played an advanced role in providing Third World scholars with a capable critical theoretical framework, which helped impose a distinct position for them in the field of knowledge production and also paved the way for dialogue with their counterparts in the North, a framework whose role was marginalized with the collapse of state socialist systems. Alatas (2003) shares with Odora a great deal of his explanation of the general decline in knowledge production in the Third World, focusing on the analysis of what he called the global division of labor in the field of social research and what he calls academic dependency, analyzing in detail the pillars of this dependency, which are: Alatas, 2003

1- The subordination of ideas to “consumption, not production.”

2- Subordination of intellectual media (publishing)

3- Dependency of educational technology

4- Dependence on external funding for both research and teaching

5- Dependency of investment in the field of education

6- Dependency generating brain drain (migration to the North or as researchers for the North in the South), (from Alatas, adapted, p. 604).

However, overcoming this dependency without falling into the abyss of excessive localism and the extreme decline in knowledge production capabilities seems to be an extremely difficult challenge, as academic excellence and engagement in distinguished knowledge production are organically linked to the degree of openness (agenda and publishing) to the North. So that the gap between developing cognitive capabilities (globally recognized) and meeting the educational, health and cultural needs of local communities is constantly deepening. Naturally, cosmopolitanism becomes the most important condition for integration into the global scientific research community, and the gap between the local and the global deepens, as Persians pointed out (Persians, 2000:6).

Therefore, what appears to be an Arab regional challenge regarding the knowledge production gap takes on its true dimension when it is framed in its global context, with its southern and northern dimensions, and within the framework of the problem represented by unequal knowledge exchange, without ignoring the aspects of privacy, neither in this deficiency nor in the historical framework through which the knowledge production system in the region was formed.

Therefore, the dialogue about the crisis of knowledge production in general, and knowledge production in the field of social sciences in the Arab region, should take place within the general framework of the dialogue about the challenges of knowledge production in the Global South, and the issues of developing capabilities for theoretical production, the first and most important of which is the ability to build new cognitive and moral spaces for alternative modernity in light of a world in which aspects of engagement and interconnection are intensifying. This is essentially a search for a new conceptual system for knowledge production.

Footnotes

[1] The percentages were calculated taking into account the change that occurred in the educational ladder [1] The proportions were calculated

[2] The numbers for the corresponding age group were calculated based on the 1993 population census data and growth expectations for the following years. [2] Age group numbers

[3] This percentage does not match the official percentages due to taking into account Cairo University - Khartoum Branch, which was included for public education in 1993.

[4] See the World Bank report:

World Bank (2003): Unlocking The Employment Potential in MENA: A New Social Contract, World Bank

[5] We must remember that two-thirds of students in the United States of America come from the middle class (ibid.) [5] It should be remembered that two-thirds

[6] Read, for example, the article: [6] Read, for example, an article

Christian Science Monitor: December, 22, 2003: Carrot or stick: Which nudged Libya?

[7] Although Odora emphasizes the distinctiveness of the theoretical framework of Marxism, he clearly sees its limitations in understanding pivotal issues such as state violence or in analyzing societies such as African society (see p. 5 and his notes derived from (Esteva, 1992). [7] Despite Odora's confirmation

.

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