Tag Archives: Education

Anthropology, Education, Islam, Science, Turkey

Turkish Islamists and American Outlier Republicans vs. Darwin……

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“When children in Turkey head back to school this fall, something will be missing from their textbooks: any mention of evolution. The Turkish government is phasing in what it calls a values-based curriculum. Critics accuse Turkey’s president of pushing a more conservative, religious ideology — at the expense of young people’s education……… At a news conference last month, Turkey’s education minister announced that new textbooks will be introduced in all primary and secondary schools, starting with grades 1, 5 and 9 this fall, and the rest next year. They will stop teaching evolution………..”

Years ago, when I was a school kid, we were taught about Charles Darwin and the evolution (and creationism of course). That was on the Gulf, the Persian-American Gulf. That was in our small corner on the northern coast, almost certainly not in the whole Gulf region. We considered ourselves more ‘advanced’ than the others, at least in education (and we were in those days).
Now Turkey, formerly thought of as the realm of Kemal Ataturk-ism but now a Muslim Brotherhood bastion, is going backward, even beyond what we had in my simple corner of the Gulf years ago.

Things are going backward in some ways, and not only in parts of the United States. More than 90 years after the Scopes Trial of Tennessee (that God-fearing state apparently still teaches mostly creationism in public schools). It is a losing battle, but some states and regions still fight (or try to) the teaching of evolution. Fortunately, many of these regions they can’t afford to publish their own science textbooks.

That is in Mr. Erdogan’s realm. It is tempting to wonder what Mr. Trump believes about this. But I’ll leave that for another time: need to hike before the predicted showers start, and out here they threaten to start any time now.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

 

Blockade of Iran, Education, Iran, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia

Prince Turki as a Nuclear Flying Dutchman: Is he Aiming to Learn Persian?………..

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““Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, warned at a conference in South Korea last month. Under the emerging deal, instead of ending Iran’s nuclear program outright, Tehran might be allowed to keep up to 5,000 centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel for energy and medical purposes. Saudi Arabia’s leaders are fixated on containing Iranian power throughout the Middle East, whether real or perceived. The Saudis worry that, once economic sanctions are lifted under a nuclear deal, Iran would gain access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen funds and new oil revenue…………”

The Prince stated something that does not need to be stated, almost inane: “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,”
Iranians also speak Persian: does this mean the Al Saud plan to all learn the Persian language? Anyway, a sovereign country can do whatever it wants at home. Which is exactly what the ruling mullahs of Iran have been saying (or claiming, if you prefer).

As I and others have posted and wisely opined, there is more to it. The Saudi princes want to keep their financial near-monopoly in the Middle East, while starving their neighbors. They feel entitled to keep their potential rivals (mainly Iran and possibly also Iraq) economically weak, and they want the Western powers to help them do it. It is a legitimate power play for the very short term, but it doesn’t work beyond that. You can’t starve national interest and sovereignty and scientific knowledge out of a society.

Of course nobody is stopping the Saudis from developing their own peaceful nuclear program, so there is no need for this Flying Dutchman Prince Turki to perpetually circumnavigate the world screaming about it. The prince is now competing on this issue with his alleged ally Netanyahu, and he sounds as stale: an alliance of convenience between the ultimate anti-semites and the Israelis.
Just do it: you can print it on a new T-shirt. Pull down your universities and colleges, restructure than away from all the Salafi Shariah “stuff” and focus on science.

If not, they can always buy a program, they are good at buying wars and Western weapons and Jihadis for Syria and terrorists for Iraq. It is all apparently legitimate……..

Nuclear Inscrutable Iranians, PrinceTurki as a Nuclear Wandering Semite………     

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]

Culture, Education, Islam, Religion, Sex

Urban Legend of the Turkish Pregnant Hand…….

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“A Turkish televangelist has warned male Muslims away from masturbation – because it may leave their hands pregnant in the afterlife. Mücahid Cihad Han supposedly made the claim in response to a call from a man who “kept masturbating, although he was married, and even during the Umrah”, a pilgrimage similar to the Hajj. Hearing the man’s plight, Han stated that masturbation is forbidden in Islam and went on to say: “Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife…………”

Nothing new here. Years ago when I was in Middle School (Junior High) back home on the shores of the Gulf a teacher of Islamic religion told our class the same thing. He claimed the “pregnant hand” would file a sexual assault complaint with God.
Scared the hell out of many students. Probably not me………..
Besides, my young skeptical mind suspected that he himself indulged…….

P.S.: It is not just in Islam. There are also the Christian ( and probably Jewish) equivalent of this Turkish cleric who spread similar nonsense.
    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]

Culture, Education, Finance, Germany, USA

Deutschland Uber Alles in Education? Wirklich, You Betcha………

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     “You know, greed is good………” Ivan Boesky, Gordon Gecko, Rick          Santelli, et al

“American students that want to attend college, but are unable to find the finances to do so, may want to look at schools in Germany as tuition fees have been eliminated country-wide after Lower Saxony became the last state to get on board. Germany universities were free in the past, but a 2006 ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that limited fees did not conflict with the Germany’s commitment to universal eduction. It didn’t take long for various states in Germany to see how unpopular the new fees were, and slowly each state dropped them, leaving Lower Saxony as the final holdout. Gabrielle Heinen-Kjajic, the minister for science and culture in Lower Saxony, said in a statement that the decision was made “because we do not want higher education which depends on the wealth of the parents.”………..”

Germany is becoming more and more like America was in the period from the 1950s through the 1970s, before the American counter-revolution that started in the 1980s against open higher education. Germany now seems to be leading the way in higher education. The target in Germany is equality and building up a well-educated society, true social mobility through an educated labor force. Educated voters are not seen as a potential enemy by any major party, not openly anyway.

That free universal education used to be the target in America as well, before the banking industry took over higher education over the past three decades. But first, in order to do that, the banking industry had to take over the U.S. Congress, both houses and both parties, which they have done admirably. And they had to get university administrators to cooperate, which they have done. Now the tuition goal is ‘whatever the market bears’, unless one is an athlete.

Change you can believe in? Yes sir, that is the small change you get after paying the tuition and the student loan payments.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]