How Education Kills Freedom

The following is not a scholarly work, but more of a rant. This is not typically how I would like to use my blog, but I felt compelled to comment on what has been going on recently at my university, specifically the Arabic program, as it illustrates an important point about how contemporary education is killing freedom of thought.

I learned recently that the Arabic program at my university is one of maybe three universities still using the Elementary Modern Standard Arabic (EMSA) series of textbooks. Most universities, including my undergraduate university, prefer the Al-Kitaab fii Ta‘allum al-‘Arabiyya series. The former is grammar and syntax based with a little vocabulary, whereas the latter is fluency based with little grammar. In any case, the director of the Arabic program here is proud of his basis in grammar, as it is an older, more scholarly approach to the language. However, it leaves transfer students in a predicament when they move to another university that uses Al-Kitaab. Apparently, there was a recent incident relating to this problem, the details of which I do not know. Suffice to say, our program director is seriously considering adding Al-Kitaab to the classes. This short essay will describe why such a precedent frustrates me, and why it signifies to me the destruction of the mind in the classroom. I have divided it into two parts. The first will illuminate the differences between EMSA and Al-Kitaab, and why I believe EMSA is superior. The second part will explain how the issue is characteristic of what is going on in contemporary education in general, and why it is an affront to free thought.

Part 1: EMSA vs. Al-Kitaab

I used Al-Kitaab as an undergraduate, and I am currently using the EMSA books. Both are excellent texts, to be sure, but the preference for Al-Kitaab over EMSA means the preference for functionality over understanding, the mundane over the scholarly, immediate reward over long-term benefit, and the closing of the mind instead of its opening. The brilliance of the EMSA books is that they demystify the language with a clear and detailed explanation of its fundamentals: grammar and syntax. Although we often take this fact for granted, it is worth stating that a language is so much more than a bunch of vocabulary words. The rules of form and organization are what give those words meaning when placed together, which allows us to understand sentences, paragraphs, and entire books. If I were to write this clause as, “As write to clause this I were if,” you might recognize each word but have no understanding of the meaning I’m trying to convey. Arabic syntax and grammar, to a westerner, looks just as muddled and jumbled. But, with knowledge of the basic elements, a student of Arabic can understand the order and get at the meaning, as if solving a puzzle with a special key. This special key is what the EMSA books try to give to students: a means of decoding the complexities of formal Arabic.

Additionally, they provide students with a basic understanding of the formation of words. As a root language, almost every word in Arabic (except for borrowed terms) is based on a single root word. For instance, the word “Al-Kitaab” comes from the verb “kataba,” which means “he wrote.” Through fairly consistent modifications, one can derive different but related meanings. “Kaatib,” for instance, means a writer, or more literally “the one who writes,” because it is an active participle form. Similarly, the title of this blog uses an active participle, “Marid,” (pronounced “Maarid”), which derives from the word “marada,” or “he rebelled.” Thus, Al-Marid is the one who rebels (and is often applied to evil genies and giants because they rebel against God). There are other forms as well, such as the often-seen word “mamluk,” the name for the slave dynasty in late medieval Egypt. This is a passive participle form for “malaka,” which means “he ruled.” Thus, a mamluk is one who is ruled, or a slave (also, one should see that the active participle Maalik means, “one who rules,” or a king). Different derived verbs also exist with general semantic implications. For instance, the word “darasa” means “he studied.” The second type of this verb, which is signified by a doubling of the middle consonant, is “darrasa.” This word means: “he taught.” This is because type two verb forms often have the semantic implication of causation, thus “darrasa” is literally causing someone to study, i.e. teaching.

The list goes on and on of various derivations from words. The point is that a student can often figure out the general meaning of a new word if he knows the meaning of the root. But in order to do so, he must know how to recognize the root and understand the semantic implications of the form. For instance, a student of EMSA would be able to look at the word “Istaqbala,” having never seen it before, and recognize the root as “qabala.” And, knowing that “qabala” means “he received (s.o.),” i.e. someone came over and he received them, they would then think: “This is the type ten form of the verb, so it has a reflexive and causative implication, thus ‘istaqbala’ means causing one’s self to be received, or going out and meeting someone.” That is basically the correct meaning of the word, and a student of EMSA can recognize it and understand it without ever having seen it before. That is the importance of Arabic grammar, and one of the most wonderful things about the language.

On the other hand, Al-Kitaab throws a series of vocabulary words at the student, with little or no explanation of how or why they are connected. A student effectively has to memorize each word independently. Although some recognition is given to forms, explanation is not emphasized. Even worse, Al-Kitaab does almost nothing to explain syntax, leaving the student with little or no way of translating if he were to read literally. The details of this are too fine to go into here, but they can have a massive impact on translation. I will try to summarize with an example. Arabic is a gendered language, meaning it has feminine and masculine words, and all verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and so forth have to agree in gender. So, imagine if a student encounters a series of male and female pronouns later in a sentence. How is he supposed to sort out which pronoun refers to which earlier noun? What’s more is that a student is apt to make a gross error in this organization if he forgets (or doesn’t know) the rule of non-human plurals always taking feminine singular agreement. This is just one of many possible ways to misunderstand an Arabic sentence, many more of which are so subtle yet so critical there is no way I can go into them here without giving a lecture of grammar. In fact, it is because they are so subtle that they require special attention, since they are the easiest to miss. For the sake of brevity, it is enough if one can imagine the possible problems. Because everything in an Arabic sentence has to have proper agreement, one can imagine that a misunderstanding of the grammar could lead to confusing an object for a subject, which verb goes with which noun, and all of the other intricacies that go into complex sentences. It can even lead to misunderstanding which form of a verb is used (in Arabic texts with no vowels, “darasa” looks exactly the same as “darrasa,” and often only rules of grammar and syntax will indicate which word must be correct), and this can completely change the meaning of a sentence. A student who does not know grammar well, a student without that special key, is going to look at a complex sentence and be hopelessly confused, even if he knows the meaning of every single word independently. That is, assuming he can even correctly recognize the word at all!

This is the advantage of EMSA over Al-Kitaab. But if what I write is true, why would so many universities prefer Al-Kitaab? The reason is simple: it is the quickest and easiest path. Studying grammar can often seem abstract and unrelated early on in learning, and it is a difficult way of thinking (to which any teacher or student of language can attest). Almost immediately, a student of Al-Kitaab will be able to greet someone, ask them the time, discuss the weather, order food at a restaurant, and many other such things. But that’s all they’ll be able to do. According to the proponents of the book, all students really need to know about Arabic is small talk.

EMSA, on the other hand, is the long and hard road, but it leads to understanding all kinds of literature, from poetry to philosophy. A student of Al-Kitaab will struggle just reading a newspaper. Al-Kitaab is not only simple, it is simplistic. And if there is any doubt left about the superiority of EMSA, allow me to illustrate from my own personally experience. I took two semesters and two summer courses with Al-Kitaab at the University of Minnesota. I left each class feeling befuddled, and after all my work, I was barely able to read children’s books written in Arabic. In three quarters using EMSA at my new university, I left each class feeling as if the language had just become simpler and more understandable. And, I was able to translate passages from the prominent medieval philosopher Ibn Rushd. I went from struggling with children’s books to reading philosophical treatises. I think the results speak for themselves.

Part 2: The Destruction of the Mind

“The fundamentals” is a term that has garnered an increasingly negative connotation in modern education. It is connected with ideas of “old,” “out-dated,” and above all “restrictive,” even authoritarian. Some would argue that students should not be forced into accepted a bunch of rules handed down to them, but should have the opportunity to express themselves and their own ideas. In order to accomplish this, several new theories like whole math and whole word reading have begun to take root in our schools. The idea is that by teaching these methods, students will have an easier and faster route to expressing themselves and their creativity. Somehow, they will unlock a student’s free thought and potential. This is false.

Take for instance the game of Scrabble. In this game, there are tiles representing one of each of the 26 letters in the English language (plus a few blank tiles which can be any of those letters). With these 26 possibilities, players form different words to score points. As anyone who has ever played Scrabble knows, this allows for many different possibilities. Players can be very creative in what words they form and how many points they score. Using only 26 different letters, Scrabble opens up thousands of possibilities. Moreover, it is fun!

The fun of Scrabble derives from the creativity of the players in how they play, and this creativity derives from their basic knowledge of 26 simple letters. If Scrabble used entire words, already set, the game would require thousands of tiles just to match the same number of possibilities, and a player would be able to do fewer creative things with those tiles. In short, it would be much less fun. To me, EMSA represents the fundamentals which do not restrict creativity, but allow it through an understand of a smaller set of rules. Al-Kitaab, on the other hand, represents the new school, the whole language, and the direction of contemporary education. Instead of a game with a few tiles and several possibilities, it makes Arabic a game of thousands of random tiles with few possibilities. It kills the fun of life, because it kills the potential for creative and novel expression.

Human beings are born with a rational mind. However, this mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate with no inherent ideas. Reason cannot spontaneously produce knowledge. It can only combine existing knowledge in new and thoughtful ways. It is from reason that derives our creative potential, our ability to imagine and predict, and to adapt to the world around us. But, it cannot function without a sound foundation of ideas to work from. This foundation is “the fundamentals.” With knowledge of 26 letters, English speakers can create any word. With knowledge of 12 tones, a musician can make any melody. With knowledge of how to shoot, dribble, and pass, an athlete can play basketball. That is how reason works. It does not work the other way around. Someone who has memorized a thousand complete songs will not be able to write his own, for he only knows what other people have written. A basketball player who only scrimmages and never develops his fundamentals will miss his shots, bobble the ball, and send errant passes. In any case, these people, whenever they encounter a novel situation, will not be able to adapt since they only have the knowledge they’ve learned in a specific context. In order to truly develop one’s reasoning mind and creative thought, a person must have a set of general rules to work from. These general rules act like a special key with which one can decode the complexities of any situation. And, one can imagine new situations and act accordingly. A musician improvising a song is quite astonishing, but it is not so bewildering when one realizes he is basing all of his improvisation on a basic knowledge of key signatures and chord progressions. Truly, it is this basic knowledge which allows his imagination to take flight, like a plane from a runway.

But this is not contemporary education. Instead, the answer is the quick fix, at the expense of the effort and time it takes to develop the basics. The fundamentals do not have such an immediate reward or applicability because they are so basic, so fundamental. One will only realize their full potential with time and work. Also, for the time being they are fairly strict and unresponsive to the interpretations of students. Students are not allowed to question: that a sentence must have a subject and a verb, that there is only one way to play the key of E minor, or that shooting a basketball requires a special form and is not just throwing the ball at the hoop. That does seem rather restrictive at first. But, a person who understands subjects, verbs, and how to construct sentences will be able to construct any sentence in order to express any idea he wishes. A person who understands the key of E minor will be able to play any melody in that key, or even write his own. And, a person who has mastered the form of shooting a basketball will be able to shoot from any angle under a myriad of situations, whether he is making a stationary jump shot in the post while being guarded or driving full-tilt to the rim for a wide open lay-up. Once again, the full creativity of a person will not be realized until he has laid the proper groundwork.

However, the creative potential of the fundamentals are long term, and their short term perception is authoritarian. Our education system has become woefully short-sighted. Instead, they want what appears immediately to be creative or expressive at the expense of truly free thinking later on in life. Only the immediate reward is what matters, and the long term damage it can do to the mind is ignored. This is why the fundamentals are disappearing, and this is why Al-Kitaab has overtaken EMSA by a vast margin. And, this is the reason for my frustration at the very thought that the director of the Arabic program here is seriously considering the book. To me, it represents the death of the mind, the death of creativity for the sake of quick rewards. To me, it means a generation of Arabic students graduating and getting jobs in the CIA or State Department as translators when they can’t even read children’s stories. It means a generation of students of language who can’t even write a semi-coherent essay. It means a generation of students who become artists only capable of copying other artists and never able to create something original and profound. That is the direction I see the education in the United States going, and that my Arabic program might be going in such a direction is sickening. It is indicative of this poisonous, short-sighted mentality that, if unchecked, will produce a society of “free” thinkers that have no idea how to think for themselves.

How to Protect the Mind

As a cadence to my rant, I’d like to give two short messages, one to students and one to teachers, about how to protect their own minds and others'.

Students: Don’t let school get in the way of your education. Don’t just scrape by with what is required in class, but seek out knowledge on your own. Go above and beyond the class material and seek out the fundamentals. If you are an Arabic student using Al-Kitaab, study your vocabulary. But, give extra attention to the few passages on grammar it contains, and supplement your knowledge by reading EMSA or some other grammar books. And, keep in mind that you’re just planting a seed. The fruits of your labor may be far off, but they will be the sweetest and best harvest.

Teachers: Don’t let others dictate your class. Most teachers, I believe, know that the fundamentals are the key to creative thought, not its antithesis. So, don’t be pressured into changing your curriculum because of what others are doing. Don’t let short-sighted administrators force you to sacrifice your convictions. And above all, don’t let lazy students keep you from doing what you know is right. They may hate you now, but one day the will thank you for it.