The Magic of Palestinian Scientific Talent
It was the beginning of the
year 2008, in a small room at the Arab Science and Technology Foundation in
Ad-Doqi neighborhood, Cairo. Eight professionals from a number of Arab
universities and scientific organisations gathered together for the Arab
region’s first-ever event that focused on engaging youth in spreading the
culture of scientific innovation and supporting Arab youth in this field. There
were representatives from various Arab countries, but after brief introductions,
we realized that the representative of the United Arab Emirates was originally
a Palestinian, the representative of Jordan was originally a Palestinian, and,
of course, the representative of Palestine was a Palestinian. I am not sure
why, but I think after losing our land in the 1948 Nakba, and losing our hope in the 1967 Naksa, our priority became educating our people to confront the
realities that depend on human capacities.
Together as representatives we
held the “Made in the Arab World Competition” in 2009, and the Palestinian
participants experienced huge success by winning four of the seven prizes. This
success wasn’t granted out of sympathy for the ever-needy occupied people; it
was fully earned after years of serious efforts and work that were initiated in
2001 by Al Nayzak Organization for Supportive Education and Scientific
Innovation, which resulted in a number of quality projects. During the past
five years, the concept of scientific innovation and entrepreneurship has become
a window of opportunity for Palestinian youth to launch their efforts in the
business market, initiating a process of creating job opportunities.
Furthermore, a number of Palestinian organisations were established by gathering
money from capital donors and setting the standard of caring for scientifically
and intellectually talented Palestinian youth. Such standards reached the
highest level with the PA’s decision to establish the Higher Council for
Innovation and Creativity in September 2012.
It is not just by chance that
we, as Palestinians, find ourselves to be the people most interested in talent
in the region. Regardless of the absence of a holistic system to incubate it,
there has been a true effort to honour this talent. Thankfully, time has
diminished the stereotype of academic education being the only tool to secure a
job, which typically revolved around three majors: medicine, engineering, and law. On the other
hand, Palestine has witnessed a strong and growing interest in unique and
quality specialisations that are based on will and talent. This approach is
what needs to be developed in our Palestinian society in order to transform it
from a society of names and titles to a society thriving on knowledge and
talent.
Talent should be accompanied by
practice and constant training and knowledge, after which accomplishment will
follow. Every day at Al Nayzak, we welcome a handful of parents at our offices
in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza who believe that their children are talented.
Parents then have the option to include their children in the Talented Students
Incubators programme, the Young Researcher programme, or other scientific
talent-fostering programmes managed by the organisation. In most cases, the
parents know that we assess their children’s scientific abilities and talent.
However, one question remains: Who is willing to pay the price of investing in
talent, and at what expense? Here we are not addressing a financial question
but rather a question of principle. Would parents accept the fact that their
children would not receive the highest grades in schools that follow the traditional
memorisation system? Would they accept that their child receive a lower grade than
the neighbour’s child who is in the same class? Would they do such a thing
simply for the sake of growing their child’s talent in electronics, physics,
arts, or other fields? Would a mother agree to announce to the mothers of other
children in her child’s class that her child is not ranked in the top ten in
school but that the child is the first in his/her violin class? The answer is most
likely no.
It is no secret that our
society and prevailing culture like to brag about our youngsters’ talent while
they are still young. But once this subject starts to affect the traditional
professional path, the majority of the community retreats to investing in the
traditional path at the expense of investing in talent, since this is what the
people are accustomed to do.
In our special case, the
Palestinian people are still humbly competing with their unique ideas, but
nevertheless, they are renowned for their outstanding capacities despite living
under constant closure due to the occupation, a shortage of resources, “neither
war nor peace” conditions, and an unclear political vision in terms of
upbringing for excellence. In addition to the conflicting interests of the
traditional business market, pioneering ideas that call for change and entry into
the world of entrepreneurship are based on know-how, informatics, and modern
trade and industrial systems. The best example would be the success of Ahmad
Ramahi, a young Palestinian innovator from Salfit, in the northeastern part of
Palestine, who started as a participant in 2010 at Al Nayzak’s “Made in
Palestine” programme which supports innovators. He quickly excelled and won awards
at the national and regional levels where he also participated in the Stars of
Science TV programme on MBC4 – an initiative of the Qatar Foundation.
I remember when Ahmad Ramahi
was accepted into the Stars of Science programme. He entered my office and his
mind was filled with doubts and questions. He said: “In order to participate in
the programme in Doha, I have to quit a stable job at the university. I have to
change my life, leave the country, and stay without a salary. I can afford all
this but what will I tell my mother? How will she accept the idea of my giving
up my position as a university lecturer to be an inventor on TV?”
Ahmad didn’t really advance on
the show and was eliminated in unusual circumstances by the Arab jury even after
his success in solving the majority of the complicated engineering problems,
according to the jury itself. However, once the show ended, he moved on, not
only because he is an excellent engineer, but because of his passion and
determination to succeed. Why didn’t the Arab committee want to keep him in the
programme despite his excellence in terms of ideas and techniques? It may be
due to the aforementioned Palestinian conditions that do not facilitate success
when all interests and selection criteria overlap and collide at the same time.
At this point, talent rests aside.
Ahmad Ramahi, and his business
partner Hassan Jaddeh, with the support of Al Nayzak, were able to develop the
innovative idea of transforming every white surface into an interactive
educational platform into an industrial business named Concepts Co. At the
company, both individuals then started to produce and market an idea that
turned into a product in the local and Arabic markets. The company also works
on innovative technological solutions in the field of IT and cyberspace.
Ahmad’s mother was able to overcome the momentary crisis of her son’s not
following the traditional path and also started to like the idea of his being
an entrepreneur and businessman instead of a university professor. This,
however, might not appeal much to the surrounding community.
In our Palestinian and Arabic
reality, everyone is racing to honour innovation and entrepreneurship. We all
attempt to reap the fruits of a non-existing tree. We applaud and honour talented
people, building on previous stereotypes that individuals who are born with
talent are able to bypass the stage of latency and jump ahead into the stage of
generating ideas and finding solutions all on their own. But to plant the tree
of sustained systematic innovation, we have to start from an early age, which can
only be done through education.
I believe that we should commit to reforming the
current education system – school or higher education – which is fully incapable
of producing talented people given that our society believes only in the
traditional life path: school, tawjihi, academic education, job, building an
apartment on top of the family house, marriage, children, forcing the children
through the same path, and so on. Therefore, we find that all our local
innovations, which start in the fields of science and technology, begin to
disappear after the recognition ceremony.
The real Arabic and Palestinian challenge lies in
founding a scientific community that is able to grow, a society that looks
ahead and is not afraid of confrontation and does not enjoy being only a
consumer of technology, but rather a society that truly wishes to contribute to
the futuristic scientific and technological civilisation.
This is the challenge. And in order to build a
productive, knowledge-based society, we need more than ever to change the
prevailing educational system from that of memorisation and indoctrination, for
knowledge should no longer be trapped in school text books. We are able, nowadays,
to easily access the information we seek whether it be through the Internet or smart
phones. The real questions that remain are: How do we interact with this
knowledge? And how do we employ such accumulated information, skills, and
analytical abilities that achieve deep and ultimate understanding of the
support and implementation of innovation that we store as knowledge capital?
The magic of talent may start with giving up fear, because undoubtedly, terrified
people cannot innovate.
Aref
Husseini is an electronics engineer, physicist, and novelist. He is the founder
and general manager of Al-Nayzak Organization for Scientific Innovation. In 2011,
he was elected vice chairman of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE)-Palestine Subsection.
aref.husseini@gmail.com
تعليقات
إرسال تعليق