Saudi Arabia to introduce media education in school curriculum

BY A CORRESPONDENT

March 10, 2007: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is launching a training program to prepare teachers for a course in media education that will eventually form part of the curriculum in the kingdom’s schools.

This was one of the major recommendations of the First International Conference on Media Education that concluded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 7, 2007.

The four-day conference brought together academic and media specialists from the Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries. It recommended various measures to put schoolchildren through their paces in media education, so that they learn to distinguish between what is harmful in the cultural and moral context and what is not.

Coordinators of the meeting concluded that there should be coordination among educational authorities from different provinces so that they could share their experience and plan a comprehensive strategy to promote media education among school children.

The plan envisages among, other things, teaching children to be discriminating in the choice of television programmes or internet to prevent possible harm to children’s morals.

The conference recommended that efforts should be made to upgrade the skills of teachers to help them shoulder their new responsibility. For this, private sector and public sector organisations as well as those groups active in the educational field should pool their resources to set up training programmes in coordination with international experts.

Academics and media specialists should set up a joint committee under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education to promote media education programmes designed to address the challenges arising from the digital world.

It was also decided that the next international conference on media education will be held in the United Arab Emirates, followed by another one in Cairo, Egypt, in 2009. From now on, these events will become an annual feature.

A question-answer session that followed the announcement of the recommendations brought to light the concerns of the participants, including women. Some called for the launch of a TV channel for teachers as part of a joint venture between the ministries of education, culture and information. Others suggested that introduction of media education as a subject could pave the way for a higher course at the university-level in future.

The thrust of the media education programme was to stimulate critical thinking among school children, according to the organisers of the conference.