ABSTRACT
Towards the end of 2000, the American University in Cairo invited me to speak on the nature of the educational reforms I wanted to see introduced in Egypt. In my lecture, which I delivered in the university’s Greek Campus, I spoke extensively about the difference between a ‘qualitative’ change in an educational system and a ‘quantitative’ change. I said we had paid scant attention to the former because our educational philosophy continues to be based on the rote system and memory tests rather than on promoting creativity and dialogue (as opposed to monologue). Education is seen not as an interactive process, but as a one-way street in which the teacher is a ‘transmitter’ of knowledge and the student a passive ‘receiver’ of that knowledge.
