Monday, 4th.October.2010, 7 o’clock in the morning, I had to wake up at that time for the first time since a while, I washed up my face, put on my formal clothes, get my bag ready, a lot of books, pins and paper.
Excitement and tension, when i looked at my self in the mirror i saw that little kid used to go to school 18 years ago, a lot of flash backs kept pop up that day,I headed to school and arrived at 7:45, entered the main entrance with students while the playing of the national anthem, a teacher saw me and came to me and asked to follow her, she took me to my class, told me to wait for student, they will come soon.
I still can hear the morning program, “hal t3lam” ,”7kmat al yom”, thing are not that different. student started to come and get seated, surprise look on there face for a male teacher who is waiting them in “mehani” Room. i waited until all student came, i kept asking if anyone still out there, and they kept answering yes, in the end I found my self facing 54 7th grade female student.
Thats a lot of student , i don’t have enough materials, i’m not prepared to that number of students. suddenly the teacher came in, she asked a group of students to go to computer room, others to go to yard and other places. in the end there was almost 30-35 students, she gave me the class, and threated the students for discipline.
I took a deep breath and started the lesson, explaining why i’m hear, what is INJAZ , what are we going to talk about all that kind of stuff. after a couple of jokes, some conversation and chitchat, i had to explains some point and a quick game in the end of the class.
45 min passed quickly for me, almost enough to give them idea , but not to do every point in the hand out. I wondered how do they take math and science class with all that students in class, if 10 students have questions or need some help you will need 20 min just for them, my experience is limited in education but i can tell that 54 student class really too much, i wish people will start donate for building school more than building mosques.
My next section will be about Puberty and changes in there lives, a guy should explain that to 12 year old girls , I don’t have any idea how am i going to do it but i hope i won’t go to jail 😛
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Wait wait wait.. what????? explain things to people not in Jordan. why you are teaching 7th graders????
For solidarity, i started to teach very young kids arabic in sunday school here. THEY ARE SUPER ENERGETIC. last week i used the chocolate trick, i actually gave candy to kids who behave.
ok, tell me more about this, and start from the beginning, not the beginning of that class
OK , the hole story starts with a phone call from a NGO called INJAZ, i filled an application for volunteering with them a year ago. i though they need some help in some events.
a lady asked on the phone to teach a course about self awareness, i refused in the beginning but after asking people did it before they encouraged me to do it.
they gave us one day training and sent us to our destiny.
the course suppose to help student to know what is happening with them in that age and how to react with community.
the course is elective, not all students should be there, but teachers send them to you to take a break for a while.
can i despise u for this ? ” i wish people will start donate for building school more than building mosques.”
Will There is no need for a mosque to cost 500m USDs 🙂 Dont you think so ?
we have 7000 mosques in jordan 5000000/7000 = 714 person (man + women + children)/mosque.
but still people keep coming to us for donation to build more mosque but no body ask for donations to build a high school or a hospital.
have you ever been to remote villages? sbe7i , irbid villages? half of the mosques are 40% completed because they ran out of money, ppl pray on cement covered floors,we have mosques in salt that cant afford to put fans and ppl just melt in the heat.
now we have 3600 public school, 2100 private school in all of jordan, thats 5700 school for 1.5 mill student, i asked my mother that works in moe to provide me with these numbers.
so according to your calculations, 7000/5mil mosques, versus 5700 school for 1.5 student, clear enough ?
another issue, once a school is built it can manage its own funds, people pay for their education dont they? so their electricity and water, maintenance..etc are handled internally, but who pays for mosques?
who pays for fuel to provide heat for the people during winter? who pays for broken fans,broken windows, broken stairs.
im not saying schools should be neglected in favor of mosques, im saying you should have said ” i wish people will start donate for building school as much as building mosques.”
I agree with Haitham, I’m not ignoring mosques, but what you can notice that everyone want to make something in memory of his father,mother or him self, he will build a mosque.
but we have a higher priority, if 1000 prayer don’t have a place to pray they will pray in there homes, if a 1000 students didn’t have a place to learn, they will go to street, if a 1000 Patient didn’t find a place to heal they will die in pain.
maintenance things in mosques, its responsibility of “Ministry of Endowments” and i don’t they need much, after all mosques are closed all the time except at pray time and they always ask for donation.
public school don’t take care of there own financial problem, there budget is limited, they don’t have any other resources, try to spend 6 hours in a class with no heat, i had to take one Tawjehi exam like this and it was a torture.
private school are becoming fancy facilities for few people only. 3 k JD/year, almost what i’ve spend in university in 4 years. if you have 2 kids , that is 6 k jd/year for something you can have for free in public school. too many people transferring their kids to public school now and we have a real education crises.
It is a dilemma. We defintely need to fix our public schools. but even adding more buildings won’t help. You still have to pay for the teachers which i think is the main problem. Which takes us to the fact that the people with lower grade became the teachers, which in return reduce the education of the students, who then become teachers, so we are in a doomed cycle.
which means our problem (as i like to usually end up) is the system of how universities accept students in different majors. IT SHOULD NOT BE THE AVERAGE OF ALL SUBJECTS. i hate the fact that who wants to be a computer science has to be good at biology or who wants to be management has to be good at physics. If we made a different requirements for each major, then it will become harder to distinguish which is a better major (it will take a time, but it will happen) which will make students chose depending on their ability/wishes which hopefully will produce better professionals in all professions.
Ok, i admit i took it a bit too far. as for the original discussion. i wish building schools is as easy as building mosques. I still think the problem lies with teachers more than the building itself. actually i am pretty sure it is.
I hope I haven’t already missed the heat of it.
About the original issue:
– Schools do not provide for themselves. People used to pay something about 20 JDs per year which I have come to understand was cancelled recently. However, The ministry of education do fund these schools from Jordan’s Treasury. Mosques, on the otherside, only get from the ministry the salery of the imam. If your mosque has a mo2athen then it’s either a volunteer or one who’s payed by some non-governmental side.
– Schools do require way too much funding than mosques do but mosques would literally collapse if no donations are done to them. The governemnt isn’t responsible for the upkeep of mosques but they will be held to blame if a school somehow crumbles down and kills the students inside.
– The whole calculations thingy is faulty in my opinion. There’s no equal distribution of mosques nor schools. As Xzeer has forementioned, I have visisted the 2 mosques near the farm in al Mafraq and it’s catastrophic. The same holds true for schools ofc, but in the case of Re7ab, the town I’m talking about, the school looks way better than my house does.
– Odin, the amount that mosques receive after Friday prayers or through boxes approach nothing. The only huge donations are done in the more luxurious mosques by the family who owns it. Schools like Jubilee do receive huge amounts of donations too so it kinda cancel each other.
– Finally, I do agree with Rashed that the sentence was too provocative. There was no need to mention mosques because 100% they’re not the cause of lack of donations to schools. Actually, money donated to mosques most probably find their way to good use, to public schools would find its way to the nearest employee pockets.
Look at you Elune, speaking logically and rationally. i am impressed.
Haitham, about the US study. actually my statement was from a US study. i didn’t mention it since it was a documentary film, so not the most accurate or reliable source i can cite.
again, elune, impressive
i’m simply asking to set priority right, school and hospitals have higher property than mosques.
In time we have teaching and health crises any donation must be set right.
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Again, Odin, if all the money that is slid into donation boxes or given to those people with the rags collecting donations after Friday prayers are directed to the education system, I don’t believe they’d be enough to pay for 3 doctors.
However, if you want my opinion on priorities, force every fucker who pays for any kind of extreme luxury pay some hefty luxury taxes and use these taxes to aid the educational/health system. Yes, the health of the poors children is more important than fuckers consuming Swiss chocolate, buying 20 JD novels, buying state-of-the-art computers to render their gaming experience slightly more intriguing, driving 4wheel drive cars that literally “burn” fuel to drive 5 kilometers to work or get 10JD haircuts.
In all rational societies, you are forced to respect people’s beliefs regardless of yours. Those people donating to mosques believe they’re buying heaven. Give me something that is of a higher priority.
“Edcuation” in the second line = “health”
And what does it mean when it says “Twitted by someone”?
@ Elune: the problem in Jordan will not practically be solved by forcing every “rich fucker” to pay taxes. The same fuckers control tax laws.
The problem lies in the root of the Jordanian (and all Arabian) society. People need to stop playing “masquerade” but get real instead.
How? كيف أطربق المجتمع؟
I know this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmijKjosplM&feature=related
will heal them for 2 minutes only.
Thanks for your comment Akram.
However, all solutions that might be suggested will be hindered by the fact that the wrong people get to manipulate laws. However, some rich people do not play tricks with the government and would pay these taxes either willingly or due to their weakened positions. And believe you me, if we get 1% of rich people to pay luxury taxes we’d get obscene amounts of revenue.
I just read some of the previous comments mentioning education in mosques and building mosques. I have to say that people with proper education and good presentation capabilities should start volunteering to do 5o6bet jom3a.
I usually fall asleep while listening, or i just get distracted, because i already know what the imam is going to say before i enter. I hope people would start getting real in there and give arguments for (example) where Islam and science conjoin and conflict. I am thinking of something that changes the typical “7aram”, “3eib”, “‘3ala6” mentality in all muslim societies.
I don’t think i’ll start doing this yet, since in my commmunity all muslims are Turkish and i don’t speek either Turkish or fluent German.
Agreed. However, I believe it will require more than just people to volunteer to do this. The audience needs to be taught to accept such topics to be discusses in al 5o6beh. I believe if an imam tries to address an atypical topic or something controversial then the people will rise as one and strike him.
I have witnessed a Friday prayer were the imam has done Sojood al sahw in the manner that is done by one of the Mathaheb which I can’t remember and most people stopped praying and started shouting. We need to spread some sort of better awareness amongst people first.