The future deserves better
Research allows us to look ahead, so the Arab world should be investing heavily in it
Education is about training the young (and not so young) for the future, but it suffers from a major problem as it can only look back. As soon as a subject has been worked into a syllabus, by definition it is already old, so any teaching programme has to look at either what is available in the present or what was available in the past. Education cannot look at skills and knowledge that do not yet exist and have yet to be discovered.
This is why supporting research in academic institutions is so important. Research allows institutions to look ahead to what will be important in the future. Research is how society finds what science or knowledge will be important. This is why it is wrong that research gets such a small proportion of spend in the Arab world's education budgets. The future deserves more.
