Jihad N. Fakhreddine: Who needs the Arabic language?

The Arabic language is becoming increasingly feeble in its ability to absorb the stupendous growth in human knowledge.

Hence, mastering English has become critical for remaining afloat, knowledge-wise. For many Arabs, including myself, proficiency in English is a major prerequisite for getting a passport to success.

Knowledge of English is also a passport for belonging to an American-inspired global culture that has been seeping through different aspects of Arab culture. In certain Arab countries, such as those in the Gulf, English has unofficially become the main language of business communication.

Should Dubai, for instance, depict the prototype of a modern Arab city, Arabic is bound to find itself out of place. A language that can only boast about its history brings little comfort to the intellectual challenges of Arab societies seeking to be knowledge-based.

Passport to nowhere

The cultural implications of a language that is increasingly becoming a passport to nowhere are many. I can relate to it at the personal, family level. During my 10-year-stay in the United States during the 1980s, I was convinced that as a researcher, I would need to be equally proficient in both Arabic and English.

Resisting the lures of an American citizenship was the fear of compromising on a deep nationalist feeling that my children's Arab identity would be diluted, if not scrapped altogether.

My fears are coming true in an Arab country. My two sons, one 12, the other 10, and many children across the Arab world, are paying the cultural price of having to learn in a bilingual educational system, in which the Arabic curriculum lags behind the English one.

When I called the school director to voice my concerns about my son's lack of interest in Arabic classes, he expressed his surprise, stating that in his 25-year stint at the school, no Arab parent had voiced such concerns. He told me that I reminded him of his children. He suggested that I get Arabic books that are used in the Lebanese Arabic curriculum. I heeded his advice, but my children are tested in the UAE Arabic curriculum, not the Lebanese one.

If it is of any comfort to the UAE's non-Arab expatriates, their fear of having their 11 and 12 Grade children appear for a unified government Arabic language examination alongside their Arabic-speaking classmates is equally shared by many Arab expatriates and a growing number of UAE nationals as well.

True, we are in the same business and economic pot, but hardly any cultural melting is taking place within the Arab context. Such mandatory examinations will not fasten the melting process, if not stifle it.

At the pace UAE and Dubai in particular is evolving, the Arabic cultural context, as currently taught in its government and private schools, is simply too limiting and bound to hamper the entire economic development process.

The UAE, being the avant-garde Arab state it is, is less likely to forge ahead to 2020 with its current Arabic curriculum, as stated by General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince and UAE Defence Minister, at the recently concluded Arab Strategy Forum.

It is a curriculum that does not equip its citizens and Arab residents with the required intellectual tools for meeting the challenges the leadership of this country is setting for them.

It is said that if a person knows two languages, then he/she is two persons; not in the sense of dual personality, but more in terms of one's intellectual capabilities.

As an Arab parent who has a career in communication and concerned about the cultural identity of my children, I fear that each of my two sons is growing into a person and a half, if not less than a half, instead of two persons. Each is a full-fledged global child and a distorted resemblance of an Arab child.

I would like to invite those entrusted with the Arabic curriculum in the UAE to sit and teach their children Arabic starting from grade 1 onwards using the books they write. Then think about the future of this country as a global state within an Arab context. Subsequently, imagine what they would see if they use the current Arabic curriculum as possible launch pad for year 2020.

I, as a parent who dreads going through the Arabic textbooks with my children, do not see how the visions of the late President His Highness Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Shaikh Mohammad can be met in 2020. It was clear from Shaikh Mohammad's speech that 2020 has become a decisive year, just as 2000 was.

Out of context

My concern is that the importance Shaikh Zayed gave to history, religion and culture was mostly taken out context when preparing the contents of the official Arabic school curriculum.

A simple count of the Arabic stories, concepts and words that were used by our forefathers, compared with what we need for meeting the stated visions of the leaders of this country, will attest to a chronic imbalance.

A book for Grade 1 need not be written by three to four doctorate holders, and reviewed by an equal number of university professors.

The authors need only to witness and experience the engine that is propelling the UAE in general and Dubai in particular, and reflect on the following question: as a component, to what extent can the current Arabic curriculum fit within this engine?

My children are not shown how this curriculum fits the vision of this country, which for them is their second home, if not the first. I cannot blame them if they see Dubai now as an illustration of how the future looks.

As functioning individuals I would like each one to be two-persons-in-one, with the Arab person in them being the more paramount. My desires are less likely to be realised.

Jihad N. Fakhreddine is a Dubai-based Lebanese media research manager