Not long ago, I was watching a football match in a local coffee shop when a seemingly trivial yet telling incident unfolded. It rekindled a dormant sadness about the state of today’s education—the alarming shallowness of knowledge among young people.
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Two Portuguese teams were playing, while nearby, two
stylishly dressed young men sat watching, their attention divided between the
match on TV and their gleaming iPhones. Their brand-new devices, pristine
sneakers, heavy gold necklaces, and easy confidence spoke of a generation
fluent in the language of consumerism. I soon learned they were twelfth graders
at a nearby high school.
As they commented on the players, one suddenly turned to the
waiter and said, “Karim, could you change the language, please? No one here
speaks Brazilian.” He then looked at me and smiled, expecting agreement. I
smiled back, but as a teacher, I couldn’t ignore the glaring error.
Curious whether it was a slip of the tongue, a joke, or a
genuine misconception, I asked, “What nationality are the teams?”
“Portuguese,” he replied.
“And what language do people in Portugal speak?”
“Portuguese,” he answered without hesitation.
“And in Brazil?”
“Brazilian,” he said, brimming with confidence.
Gently, I corrected him, explaining that the language on TV
was Portuguese, not ‘Brazilian.’ I added that Brazil’s official language is
Portuguese, spoken by nearly all of its population due to Portugal’s colonization.
I compared it to how Morocco and Algeria speak French due to French
colonization or how India and Pakistan use English because of British rule. He
listened intently, nodding in appreciation, as if a light had just switched on
in his mind.
This brief exchange sent me down memory lane. At his age, my
knowledge of geography and history was far more robust. I recalled my demanding
teacher, Mr. Terrab, who made us memorize the names and geographical features
of all the countries in the curriculum—their mountains, rivers, lakes,
capitals, and even their political systems. Each lesson began with a rigorous
exercise: he would call four students to the board and give each one a task—for
example, one to draw Africa with all its countries, another to mark the world’s
mountains, a third to trace Morocco’s rivers, and a fourth to outline the
mineral resources of North Africa. By high school, I could navigate the world’s
political, historical, and geographical landscapes with ease.
As students, we quizzed each other relentlessly on global
knowledge, boasting about who knew more about world leaders, historical events,
and political affairs. Though many of us had little, wearing threadbare clothes
and barely owning a second outfit, we were hungry to learn. Knowledge was our
currency, and we spent it lavishly.
But today’s students? Speaking from experience, many
struggle to locate Mali, Botswana, or Sierra Leone on a map. Some mistakenly
place African nations in Europe, confuse European countries with those in Asia,
or mix up Latin American nations with disconcerting ease. Many pass through
school relying on malpractice, flaunting the latest sneakers and chasing after
the newest phone models, yet remaining indifferent to the vast world beyond
their screens.
This realization filled me with frustration. The spark of
curiosity, once the heartbeat of education, has dimmed. In its place, gossip,
social media trends, and passive learning reign supreme. The classroom, once a
vibrant arena of ideas, now feels like an abandoned shrine—students
mechanically copying from the board, disengaged and uninspired. Education has
become a hollow ritual, a performance where teachers and students alike simply
go through the motions.
Who bears the blame? Governments have surrendered to market
forces, parents have abdicated their roles, teachers feel powerless, and the
entire education system has turned students into guinea pigs for so long. All share responsibility for this generational drift.
I honestly don’t know whether to blame, scold, or
sympathize with this generation. It is a "depressed generation" swept
up in a digital whirlwind, constantly bombarded with images of seemingly
perfect lives. It measures status in likes, self-worth in followers, and
knowledge in whatever Google can spit out in seconds. It fails to see that this
curated reality is often a mirage—where the one preaching healthy living may
secretly binge on junk food; the one presenting a virtuous image might lead a
double life. This culture of superficiality has stripped today’s students of
critical thinking, replacing deep understanding with fleeting digital
convenience.
And yet, it is hard to remain hopeful when this generation
struggles not just academically but culturally and intellectually under the
weight of ongoing sociopolitical crises. They navigate a dystopian era plagued
by stifling mediocrity, systemic rampant corruption, economic instability,
resurgent diseases, brutal wars, nuclear threats, family breakdowns, and the
ever-looming shadow of climate change. Hope falters when our public schools
succumb to Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmares of so-called reforms, with
students reduced to mere pawns in a bigger game. Optimism falters when our public
education system, once a sturdy edifice, is collapsing inward like a house of
cards, or, in Mohammed Gahs's stark words, 'a massive, upside-down corpse.'
The core issue extends beyond a failing education system;
it’s a profound cultural shift. To reignite intellectual curiosity, we must
all— governed and governors alike—radically rethink how we educate and inspire
young minds. Otherwise, if the old saying holds true—'you reap what you
sow'—then we risk raising a generation of passive consumers, exhibiting the
Dunning-Kruger effect, adrift in a sea of information yet understanding so
little of its depths.
