Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain

 Date: March 19, 2007

Date: 30/5/2006

Joseph Taylor Discusses Education Efforts in Bahrain

Education is key to forming a strong society and it is the central motivation for the Center for Civic Education, located in Washington, DC. The Center for Civic Education strives to promote democratic values through education programs in the United States and abroad. Joseph Taylor is the Senior Program Manager at the Center for Civic Education where he manages the Center's Arab Civitas program and its activities in 13 countries in the Arab Middle East. In Bahrain specifically, Mr. Taylor has been active in instituting civic education initiatives in the nation’s schools. We sat down to ask him a few questions about his organization and the state of education reform in the Middle East.

1. Please explain the mission of the Center for Civic Education. What do you strive to accomplish by promoting civic values through education?

The Center for Civic Education (Center) has more than 40 years of experience in the field of civic education and has been at the forefront of efforts to promote democratic citizenship worldwide for more than a decade. The Center is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization. Our mission is to promote an enlightened and responsible citizenry committed to democratic principles. The Center is the nation’s leading civic education organization with a wide range of critically acclaimed curricular, teacher-training, exchange, and community-based programs. The Center has active civic education programs and partnerships in all 50 U.S. states and more than 60 countries, including eight active programs and five pilot programs in the Arab Middle East.

2. How does the Center for Civic Education work to promote democracy abroad? What is the role of citizenship education in strengthening emerging foreign democracies?

The Center’s approach internationally is to partner with individuals and institutions that invite us to work with them. Center’s areas of expertise include the development of K-12 curricular materials, interactive training in these materials, and support for the planning and implementation of civic education programs. The Center’s international partners assess the local level of governmental and societal acceptance of civic education and develop long-term plans that will lead to implementation of civic education.

Each year the Center hosts the World Congress on Civic Education in which the best practices of every participating country and state are shared. The World Congress in Amman, Jordan, in June 2005, highlighted the accomplishments of the new Arab Civitas network.

The Center’s Project Citizen and Foundations of Democracy curricular programs, in translated and adapted form, are being used by more than 1.5 million students in over 60 countries around the world. In a number of these countries, governments have approved the Center’s curricular programs for use in all schools. The Center has also introduced Elements of Democracy–a resource that explains the terms and concepts required to comprehend and discuss democracy–to a number of educators, including Iraqi educational leaders.

3. How is the Arab Civitas program working with the wave of democracy appearing throughout the Middle East?

Arab Civitas, an Arab Civic Education Network, was established by Arab education leaders in November 2003. Today, the network spans 13 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, with a regional support office located in Jordan. Program directors in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen and regions of the West Bank and Gaza have translated, adapted and implemented the civic education programs Project Citizen and Foundations of Democracy. The mission of the network is to help develop active citizens awareness of their rights and responsibilities. Arab Civitas country programs are using Center materials in Arabic with students of all ages, from kindergarten through university level, in private and public schools, and as an extracurricular activity. Through the 2005-2006 school year, over 2,500 teachers have been trained and over 93,000 students have participated in its programs.

The Arab Civitas network is the only region-wide network of civic education leaders dedicated to introducing civic education programs in schools and building civil society support for government education policies that recognize the importance of citizenship education. Educators and policymakers throughout the Arab world participate in the network because it offers innovative, youth-centered, interactive curricular programs and professional development opportunities for teachers and other education professionals. In the few years that the Center has been active in the region, it has opened dialogue with host-country ministries of education and developed varying degrees of partnership with them. In addition to its outreach to ministries, the Center’s programs have elicited the strong support and involvement of schools, parents, and local communities.

The network works to strengthen, coordinate and enable existing Arab organizations that work in the field of civic education in order to promote opportunities, communication and continuity. Educators throughout the Arab Civitas Network have facilitated and organized exchanges among educators and policymakers, professional development workshops for teachers, cross-curricular lesson and material development, and regional partnerships in the development of education for democracy.

4. How does Arab Civitas incorporate Arab culture while promoting democratic ideals?

The Center relies on the advice, resources and experiences of the Arab Civitas country program directors for the introduction, development and expansion of in-country programs. By working in close cooperation with local institutions, the Arab Civitas network fully incorporates Arab culture and the unique cultural, political, and social environment of each country. The network also makes its decisions democratically and organizes workshops, research, conferences and training about citizenship and civic education in a way that embraces many Arab issues.

In Project Citizen students choose topics that are important within their communities and select and develop solutions that reflect local values and traditions. The materials students use are first translated into Arabic in the Jordanian Regional Support Unit and then are adapted by each country to reflect local cultural differences. There are currently seven country specific adaptations of Project Citizen.

5. As a newly emerging democracy within the Middle East region, Bahrain offers a great opportunity for civic education to make a difference in engaging the public in civic and political society. What is the Center for Civic Education’s relationship specifically with Bahrain?

The program in Bahrain is of a special nature since the Center deals directly with the Department of Curriculum at the Ministry of Education. The country program director, Mr. Khalid Al Khaja, was selected by the Ministry to work on the project. The Ministry of Education is introducing Project Citizen in secondary schools throughout the nation through a carefully designed incremental plan.

6. Tell us about your experience in Bahrain. What has the program accomplished so far?

On each of my visits to Bahrain, I have enjoyed great personal hospitality as well as access to decision makers in the Ministry of Education. The Ministry has proceeded carefully and thoughtfully to adapt and introduce Project Citizen and Foundations of Democracy to Bahraini classrooms.

The Bahrain program began in the fall of 2005 as a pilot project. The Minister of Education has approved the adoption of the materials of both Project Citizen and Foundations of Democracy as part of the official curriculum in Bahrain. The Ministry of Education is gradually introducing the programs to make sure that all teachers implementing them are properly trained. Project Citizen has been offered in some public schools as an elective course, and beginning with this academic semester it will be offered in all Bahraini Public schools (for grades 9 & 10) as an elective course. Foundations of Democracy is being piloted in a number of Bahraini elementary schools.

The Ministry of Education has adapted Project Citizen in order to produce a Bahraini version and changed the characters of the Foundation of Democracy texts to fit the cultural context of Bahrain. The Ministry bore the expenses of adapting and printing the Bahraini version of Project Citizen and the adapted versions of Foundations of Democracy.

7. How is the program being funded?

Civitas International Programs are directed by the Center for Civic Education and funded by the U.S. Department of Education under the Education for Democracy Act approved by the United States Congress; additional support is provided by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other sources. Specifically, the Arab Civitas program is funded through a grant from the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) in the U.S. Department of State.