Democracy in the Middle East: The Educational Battle

Abstract

The unrest in the Middle East has created vacuums where authoritarian and democratic powers are in conflict. Education in all countries is at the heart of the challenges to leadership. In most Middle Eastern countries, graduates from middle school upward have been guaranteed employment in the government. Failure to meet this promise has left thousands of youth who are educated but unemployed. Further fueled by the overwhelming number of refugees, leaders in Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel are threatened by the unemployed and refugees' access to technology and their democratic demands. Authoritarian countries such as Iran and Turkey are emphasizing religious education in order to increase the control of their people. Research, on-site visits and media reports provide the basis for this study which identifies three forces of the educational conflict: religious education, informal education, and access to technology. The possible solutions for future educational directions provide a roadmap for the future.

Data science education programmes in Middle Eastern institutions: A survey study

“…However, the political instability and regional conflicts that are being witnessed in some Middle Eastern countries may explain the lack of data science programmes in educational institutions. In addition, the Middle East region remains a hotbed of political events and conflicts, and there is a lack of infrastructure in some countries that are experiencing long-standing conflicts and civil wars, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen (Cochran, 2018; Sørli et al, 2005).…”

“…However, the political instability and regional conflicts that are being witnessed in some Middle Eastern countries may explain the lack of data science programmes in educational institutions. In addition, the Middle East region remains a hotbed of political events and conflicts, and there is a lack of infrastructure in some countries that are experiencing long-standing conflicts and civil wars, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen (Cochran, 2018;Sørli et al, 2005). Song and Zhu (2017) report that data scientists should be able to understand the roles of big data technologies; work in all the stages of the data science cycle, from discovering problems to providing appropriate solutions; and use the various tools of data science to solve big data problems.…”