A COUNTRY’S UNDERDEVELOPMENT stems from the failure to nurture the human being, alongside a propensity to lethargy. Japan, for example, lacks natural resources yet it is skilled in building people. Japan advanced due to the superiority of its population in its educational, moral and educational composition, in its accumulated professional experience, its perseverance in work, and its high rate of productivity both in quantity and quality. Singapore similarly lacks material wealth, but has surpassed other countries and soared to impressive rates of development, because it prioritised human capital formation in its development programmes.  To achieve this it placed its reliance on the benefits of modern science and knowledge acquisition, on the important gains achieved by the mind and on human expertise in the field of education.

Education, and the building and consolidating of values, form the cornerstone of every creative development process; success in this points to successes everywhere, just as failure there points to failures everywhere.

The education equation may be considered as consisting of three elements: the teacher, the student, and the curriculum. This equation cannot fulfill its promise nor its fruits be harvested without a parallel reconstruction in all of its elements: any imbalance in one of the elements of this triangle imbalances the entire equation. Education and the building of values is the dilemma of development in our countries, it is the deep cause of all our failures in any of the processes of comprehensive development.

Cultural and academic illiteracy

Cultural and academic illiteracy is alarmingly widespread among faculty members in Arab universities. You rarely see anyone pursuing what is new in their academic specialization, and they are even less interested in keeping up with intellectual production whether Arabic or in other languages, or in acquainting themselves with serious works in their various fields. Even though modern communication platforms with their multiple and diverse applications have superseded the role of the traditional book in education and knowledge acquisition, and have usurped its central position in cultural advancement, many educators from the older generation do not have recourse modern communication platforms, and know nothing about most of their applications. If they do have recourse to them, this does not go beyond the level of public relations communications and social engagements. We rarely come across quality posts from educators that can reflect their culture and academic formation.

Cultural and academic illiteracy is alarmingly widespread among faculty members in Arab universities.

Most teachers of the older generation are unaware of the amazing innovations in artificial intelligence and the great benefits that these promise. These impact upon patterns of work, production and marketing, while various professions disappear and are replaced by alternatives. A qualitative shift is occurring in how science, knowledge and culture are received, and in pedagogical methodology, and the means and methods of instruction. The pace of change affects numerous areas of life, so that

“when we talk about the presence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, we practically talk about everything. It includes the emergence of a computer capable of reading handwritten documents, and a robot that performs complex surgeries independently of human intervention. An extensive database has now been created that includes the characteristics, behaviours, and personal characteristics of every one of us, based on everything we read or write on the Internet … As the performance of artificial intelligence deepens, we see before us that it will not be satisfied merely to provide solutions instead of us, but is able to think in ways that human beings cannot. There are sophisticated algorithms that can deal with huge amounts of data and discern patterns in it, all of which gives these algorithms the capacity to change society itself.”[1]

Artificial intelligence gives a new meaning for capital, one that differs from its classic meaning. It is now the most valuable form of wealth that man possesses in our world today. The value of material wealth does not equate to the actual value of artificial intelligence and the goods, services, knowledge and material data that it can yield in the various fields of human life.

Illiteracy in its fullest manifestations today effectively refers to ignorance of artificial intelligence and what it accomplishes today and what it promises for tomorrow. It means ignorance of how communication platforms and their various applications may be employed. It means the inability to benefit from the cognitive and cultural formation that it can provide, and a failure to apply it to scientific and academic development, and a failure to understand that the sources of knowledge and the methods of receiving it are no longer what they were yesterday, and that teaching methods are no longer the same. Communication platforms and their various applications have broken the monopoly of the paper book and all the traditional methods of cognitive and cultural formation. It has overwhelmed the customary means of publication and dissemination. They now run neck and neck to the academic formation process that universities have inherited over nine centuries,[2] and as far as I see it will overtake it after a relatively short time.

These new methods have replaced the mechanical teaching methods inherited by several generations, and have retired experienced teachers from their craft

Artificial intelligence and communication platforms and their various applications have come up with alternative teaching methods that express the way the world now is, and by means of which the most precise and complex subjects are now clear and easily understood thanks to audio-visual techniques that are not monotonous or boring. These new methods have replaced the mechanical teaching methods inherited by several generations, and have retired experienced teachers from their craft, simply because their methods were no longer palatable to the new generation.

Anyone keen on continuous cognitive, cultural and linguistic formation in any field can out-perform professional teachers in their various sciences, specialisms and languages, and at all levels. For example, anyone who wants to learn another language no longer needs regular attendance at established institutes for language instruction, since he can simply turn to specialized sites on YouTube and the like, which will provide him with excellent, and free, education direct to his home, without incurring the trouble of commuting or spending any money and using up his time.

The volume of the flowing amount of data, in various sciences, knowledge, arts and literature, has reached a limit that is beyond a single human’s ability to keep up with it, let alone absorb it. Specialists or amateurs alike can therefore only see a very limited quantity of it.

“The amount of digital data produced over the next eight years will exceed 40 zettabytes, which is equivalent to 5,200 gigabytes of data for every man, woman and child on Earth. To put things into perspective, 40 zettabytes is 40 trillion gigabytes. It is estimated that this amount is 57 times the number of all the grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. It is expected that by the year 2020 all data will double every two years”[3].

This new pattern of life, in which man has become a being constant movement, does not cease transforming, does not cease to extend, and does not stop at any one point other than to ‘catch its breath’ before resuming its progress. The man that most of the ancient philosophies knew him – a thinking being who remains where he is, not being a part or constituent of something else – no longer exists. Rather, Man has become, in the modern concept, like some part of a whole, a product of what lies around him. That is, he is in some ‘in-between’ state  like some eternal wayfarer, who does not stop moving. He only stays in one place to leave it to another, in tandem with the moving pattern of everything that is around him. Everything around him moves with him, and he moves in step with it. He lives in some sort of new geography whose terrain is like jelly, its borders weak, its places overlapping. Its culture is colourful and its identity is composite. His way of life is the most bizarre it has eve been since the dawn of history[4].

Causes and results

Cultural and academic illiteracy is not something limited to certain educators in Arab universities – it applies to most of the universities I know in the parochial environment beyond the space of Arab higher education. Some data and assessments carried out in eastern and western universities indicate that they are suffering from the same crisis. This is due to the loss of a strategic vision for building education and culture and the lack of a firm will to implement it. Even where such a will does exist, it lacks perseverance and is fragile. There is a lack of enthusiasm for this among policy-makers, and there is a lack of seriously qualified experts to implement it. The physical and technological infrastructure necessary for its birth also remain weak.

We should try here to identify the foundations of the educational process, and illustrate the mutual alienation of the professor from the student, and the impact this has on academic formation, and the results of this alienation in terms of intellectual and cultural illiteracy. We may summarize this as follows:

1. The student’s time differs from the educator’s time, by which I mean time in its educational and cultural sense. Each time has its own ‘chronological mindset’. The student exists in the world of the present, while the existence of many educators is fixed in the world of the past. Most professors live alienated from their present and are biased towards an excessive confidence in the past, as if that past were eternally correct. Few professors, hailing from the generation of the students’ parents, are able to negotiate the world as it is now and keep pace with things such as artificial intelligence and the new sciences, data and contemporary culture that communication platforms and their various applications are offering.

1. The student’s time differs from the educator’s time, by which I mean time in its educational and cultural sense. Each time has its own ‘chronological mindset’. The student exists in the world of the present, while the existence of many educators is fixed in the world of the past. Most professors live alienated from their present and are biased towards an excessive confidence in the past, as if that past were eternally correct. Few professors, hailing from the generation of the students’ parents, are able to negotiate the world as it is now and keep pace with things such as artificial intelligence and the new sciences, data and contemporary culture that communication platforms and their various applications are offering.

The student exists in the world of the present, while the existence of many educators is fixed in the world of the past

Education today therefore fails when it seeks to churn out similar human beings, as if they were identical machines devoid of the uniqueness of the human person and traits distinct from anyone else on earth. These differences are the source of creativity and our unique ability to invent and innovate.[5]

3. An educational system that expresses the educational requirements of the student will be different from the educational system that the educator is familiar with and obliges the student to learn.  Each thinks with the rationality of the world to which he belongs, deals with his cultural traditions, adopts his own system of values, and speaks his own language. For language is not a neutral tool: it is imbued with the logic of the rationality of the age and its culture. What this means is that the educator and the student lacks knowledge of each other’s language, so the dialogue between them is the dialogue of the deaf.

4. The educational process is a dialectical process, not a mechanical one.  The student educates the teacher, just as the professor educators the student – each inspiring the other, forming his mind, generating awareness, and stimulating his mind through asking questions and formulating answers.

5. If the educational process remains mechanical, it ceases to be educational. It fails to inspire the student or the educator, and the effectiveness of its impact and mutual influence is diminished. As a result, the minds of both the educator and the student can become flabby, and they both succumb to boredom and frustration, ending for some with feelings of disgust or even nausea.

6. The boring educator’s repetition of discourse without any grasp of the secrets of a language attractive to students, and with no understanding of the student’s emotions and feelings, will be unable to transmit to the student knowledge or science or any awareness of the world in which he lives. It will not enable him to formulate questions, or express his imagination, his dreams or intellectual concerns, and will remain unconnected with his value system and cultural trends. Both are obligated to act in their own way:  the educator is governed by the requirements of making a living, the student is governed by obligations imposed on him by a hallowed pedagogical tradition – all of this without regard to any fruit or outcome.

7. The new generation receives knowledge, culture and values from the various means of communication and their many applications, and the novelties and attractions that they offer for free – attractions calibrated to their various stages in life and their various levels of perception, understanding and comprehension and taste. (My niece Sama, at the age of two, spends many hours every day watching films dedicated to her age group broadcasted on YouTube. Due to her excessive taste for them and interaction with them, she screams in terror any moment one of the parents prevents her in their bid to stop her becoming addicted to it).

The educational process is a dialectical process, not a mechanical one. The student educates the teacher, just as the professor educators the student

8. The dilemma for faculty members is that they are living in a new world unlike the world they knew yesterday, a world that is moving forward apace, a world that consigns those who do not adapt to it to oblivion, then considers them a burden and erases them. Most educators are unable to adapt to this world since they lack a deep awareness of it, and are unable to respond to its requirements, its media, its symbols and language. Most of them do not have the will to rebel against a past that remains very present in their minds, and wields power over their feelings, and not least because that world forms a deeply rooted component of their consciousness; they are stuck with each other. The pace of transformation outstrips the response of the educational system to the needs of children, since the pace of change in the mind outstrips any ability to keep up with it. It fails to maneuver in a way that can respond to it and harmonize with it. Hence the gap between these systems and the needs of the new generation, which educational systems even in developed countries may not be able to meet.[6]

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And just as all devices that operate according to artificial intelligence systems require continuous updating to improve the efficiency of their performance, the same applies to the educational system. If it is not updated, it expires and falls out of circulation.

It is therefore not surprising that faculty members are not keen on continuous cognitive and cultural training in a world that is unfamiliar to them, and most of them have thus failed to adapt to it. The methods, means, and tools of intellectual and cultural formation in this new world differ from anything that they have known or practiced, and their addiction to yesterday has turned into a component of their intellectual identity. We therefore find that most of them lack any incentive to grasp the new.

Instead, the professor suffers from tedium when his sources of inspiration dry up, and his energy for an effective, inspiring response, or any incentive for continuous cognitive and cultural training or for learning anything new dries up. It may be that the professor experiences a disgust with himself when he regurgitates words that fail to constitute knowledge or increase the recipient’s knowledge, or fail to effect in any way the building up of the student’s awareness, his imagination, his aspirations or intellectual concerns.

[1] Ghada al-Mutairi , الذكاء الاصطناعي (‘Artificial Intelligence’) The Independent – Arabic, June 11, 2019.

[2] The University of Bologna was founded in Italy in the year 1088 AD, said to be the first university for higher education in the West and still functioning today. Oxford University was founded in the year 1167 AD and still functions to this day.

[3] Dr. Ahmed Abu Bakr Sultan, ‘Big Data.. Its Characteristics, Opportunities, and Power’ – Al-Faisal al-‘Ilmiyya 28th November 2017.

[4] Dr. Abd al-Jabbar al-Rifa’i, الدين والاغتراب الميتافيزيقي (‘Religion and Metaphysical Alienation‘) Beirut, Center for the Study of the Philosophy of Religion, Baghdad and Dar Al-Tanweer, 2nd. ed., 2019, p. 65.

[5] Dr. Abd al-Jabbar al-Rifa’i, ثناء على الجيل الجديد (‘Praise for the New Generation‘), article published in the online newspaper ثقافات (‘Cultures‘) 30th January 2018.

[6] Op. cit.

Note: The author first made these observations in 2019 in response to a question posed by Dr. Ali As’ad Watfa, Professor of Educational Sociology at the College of Education at Kuwait University, and formerly at the University of Damascus,” who was preparing research on academic illiteracy in Arab universities.

The dexterous thinker who accurately keeps pace with reality simply finds himself overwhelmed by the profound transformations that blow across like some hurricane, with the amazing progress made by artificial intelligence today. It is as if we swim in some flowing waterfall stream, not knowing where we are going to end up. The clearest reflection of how these transformations have affected us is the new Chat GPT application and its sister systems which emerged at the end of 2022 which Bill Gates, the co-founder of (Microsoft) referred to, saying: “The (ChatGPT) artificial intelligence program is of the same importance as the invention of the Internet. (Interview with the German daily Handelsblatt – Al Jazeera TV, February 10th 2023. See also my article الرهان على الكتابة (‘Gambling on writing’) in Al-Sabah newspaper 29th March 2023).