When we knew that the debate will be about education .
The first thing came to our minds the school or the university
where we learn or work or where our children join.
In my opinion , it’s a proof that formal education
has a top priority than any other type of education.
So , in my opinion formal education is more effective
Than informal one for many reasons
First, it gives an accredited certificate.
Of course , it’s a point we can’t omit when we talk about education
because it's very important for the students and their parents to get
a certain benefit from the money they pay.
In other words, getting effective education.
that benefit comes when he graduates and needs a job,
an accredited certificate is highly required in many places to prove that you are
specialized in a certain major.
Formal education gives you that.
Okay ! How can such education do that?
By something we call standards.
What do standards mean?
Let’s give you a simple example.
While we are traveling there are signs along the road
that tells us the distance we still have to cut,
also education standards indicate the level that the student
has reached in the educational process.
The next point that makes formal education more effective
is the possibility to do research and develop.
In any university, one of its modus operandi is to
do researches How?
By allocating further funds to scientific research
and thus we can develop industry , agriculture
trade , medicine, pharmacy architecture, and even
education itself.
okay Why is doing such researches possible?
Because these foundations are non-profit so they can allocate a portion of their
financial support to do these researches.
The next point is The idea of goals.
What are the goals of formal education?
Any educational institution, school or university even private ones
works under what we call "the national goals of education"
Or "The national plan for education”
The country put this plan to achieve its and the society’s goals.
another point , also for goals is the condition of informal education
Does it achieve any of society’s goals?
If we have an example from informal education
These courses called human development courses It's preferable to call it
self-development.
Of course it's clear, What we mean
these courses are par excellence that most of the people who took them,
Want to be human development trainers Okay !
But after a while , They won’t find a job
Why?!
Because other thousands had had the same idea And thus, this kind of trainers
Becomes excessive beyond the required . Does education aim to make all people
Human Development trainers?
If we revise the main nomenclature of this science , we will find that its name
is "Human resource development".
Here is a question.
What are these human resources that need such development?
These are skills, abilities energies, interests
and the knowledge that everyone could have.
Okay How can I identify all these things?
Or how can I use them if I don’t join a school or a university?
It’s just a question.
The following point, Education deals with human as a whole.
What does “as a whole”mean?
For instance, the child goes to school
to study various sciences and to come into contact with other children
with different backgrounds and different interests
so in these organized interactions, inside the sessions
or in the unorganized ones.
While they are playing and talking with each others
the human personality is formed, Okay
Here comes another question.
Do we find all these things in informal education?
One last thing, As we said, the main goal of education is
to shape the human personality Okay
Do you think we can do so in a month or two,
even a year?
I think it takes much longer time.
The last point which may be an intuitive one.
Who is the responsible for the educational process
in the informal institutions?
If we look at any center which offers such courses,
We should ask several questions.
Who offers these courses?
Who organizes them?
Who manages them?
About who offers these courses we will Find university alumni
who could have worked on it So they have knowledge
which they can use *applause*
Hello I will start with one small thing
Then I will talk about 3 other points Which are:
What is the situation now in Egypt?
Especially in education.
Then I will identify informal education.
Finally , I will talk about the future of informal education.
Then I will have 2 minutes to answer all Mr.Essam’s questions.
If we want to assess the condition of a specific country and estimate its strength
from my point of view, our assessment should be based on 2 things:
economy and scientific researches.
Egypt ‘s economy , nowadays falls in the 118th position
out of 148 countries.
Besides, it’s in the 127thposition out of 148 countries concerning scientific research.
Apparently,there is something wrong in the number of workers in labor market
who are totally responsible for refreshing the economy and
doing scientific researches.
Why specifically economy and scientific research?
Because economy is the result of our production, And scientific researches is the beginning
of our development What about the educational process?
The formal education that we are talking about is
in the 73rd position out of 148 countries.
So we are at the bottomof the report and also our output is very low.
I won’t refer to all the problems in our education system
because they are a lot.
I will talk about 3 certain things.
First, the curriculum chosen by the ministry of education
is a very rigid one despite the differences between students.
Every student has his set talents and abilities Which differ from the others
So , its unavailing to teach them something like mathematics in the same way despite their
differences and when someone gets 30 out of 50
it means that he is a failure, no, he isn’t a failure.
He could be very successful in any other field.
That was the first point, The rigidity of curriculum.
The second point is in that kind of education we find that
all children live in a world of their own, they know nothing about what’s going outside.
They don’t put a plan for their future.
What will they do then?
They don’t know much about the world outside.
The third point is The methods used in the educational process.
Recently -and thanks God for that- they started to use projectors and the PowerPoint
Program in universities.
Despite the fact that they fought a lot for that moment,
the used methods themselves have a lot of problems.
These were mainly the 3 problems in the educational process.
What’s informal education?
It's not a specific thing.
It’s the opposite of the formal one.
What does formal education mean?
It means going to school, university to acquire a certificate to help you
in finding a job, then you will eventually die
and that’s all.
But seriously, informal education is to let the child decides what he is going
to learn and what he is going to be in the future
instead of being worried that if he doesn’t go to school he will be a dropout.
Informal education takes care of that part “What’s in it for me?”
Let's suppose that you like something So you will take a course to learn it and
use it.
What are the types of informal education?
There are many different types of it and among our speakers here
there are a lot who work in informal education system
People who work on increasing others self-confidence, who teach them how to represent themselves
and who create videos on YouTube to simplify science and make it much easier.
Also talent seekers, That’s mainly informal education.
Okay, what’s its future?
Our debate’s title today is "Is informal education more effective than
the formal one?"
Okay, is its future to replace the formal one?
It will be useless to have both formal and informal systems at the same time
so , simply the mission of informal education is to
eliminate the deficit of the formal one.
The main point is to make informal education much stronger to replace the formal one.
Mr. Fareed's point of view was totally about The educational process crisis
and it's something undeniable.
But it's not our matter.
We are here to discuss whether the informal education is more effective or
not.
The second point: We really face a lotof problems in
our educational system but to Solve these problems
Should we replace that kind of education by a new one
or should we start doing researches on how we can develop it.
As I said before, and I don’t remember whetherI was clear
Enough or not, one of education's goals is to
form the human personality.
Okay, what does this mean?
A human has several aspects one of them is knowledge
and among the others there are ethics and skills.
All these aspects can be developed or acquired from school and university.
So one of the main goals of education anywhere is to form a good citizen
What does it mean?
a good citizen is the one who is very loyal to his society
and who realize the meaning of that loyalty and hence find a role to himself to be effective
in the society.
The second point I will try to talk about is
If we are going to choosenow between formal education with its problems
And its alternative, the informal one.
What will be our choice?
If the country has the choice now to allocate its expenses
would it be towards schools and universities ?
or towards the private centers?
I don’t think we can handle it.
*Applause* I will reply on what was said at first
Mr.Essam mentioned the certificate Yes, it’s a big problem
Truly a lot of people need such certificates because if I apply for a job without having
any kind of certificates, they won’t accept me
and it will be a big problem But unfortunately it’s the truth
which we should deal with.
I will tell you how we can deal with it I want to emphasize something
It's not one from the informal education goals to be supported from the country.
Having informal education system became very important now because of the massive
problems we can find in schools
so, the informal should be sustained and should have a stand-alone business model
without any external help and after proving itself,
It could be in a partnership with the country.
For example, There is something called STEM
and it stands for Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics.
It's totally an informal kind of education and it now has two business models in Egypt
in two schools, one in Maadi and the other in the 6th of October city.
Ministry of education began to use the STEM idea
when they found that it is a very effective way
now, I can join STEM not secondary school and once I pass it I can go to university
Another thing…., if I am not in STEM and
I am not involved in anything else There is something called home schooling;
that I can study at home, do whatever I want and
go to school just to have tests in order to take the certificate.
Nevertheless, the certificate shouldn’t be my only motivation.
I want to say something quickly, the interactions happening in schools could
happen anywhere else not only in schools.
When we go out camping or on field trips such interactions become more and more effective
and peoplealways like them.
*applause* Is there any kind of
home schooling in Egypt?
Okay, that’s a point.
Finally, my conclusion is the educational process is
a very long one which takes a lot of time, effort and money.
So, only large institutionslike Schools and universities could sustain it.
It always has a goal and works with a certain plan
to build the society.
Education's goal isn’t giving me a certain certificate
but its goal is to shape the human personality to form a human with a specific role in the
society.
I can take a course to acquire a certain skill and thus I can work and make a living from
this skill.
But it couldn’t be the suitable role for me
to participate in the development of my society and country.
*Applause* Finally the whole point is that
we always follow what we found our father already following.
We found people and schools in such cases and we didn’t try to do something
about it.
It’s a tradition when a child is three, he must go to school, after finishing it
he must go to university, preferably a good one to find a good job they
say.
The idea is, please don’t swim with the tide
Do that if you understand, if it’s useful and
fits your goals.
If you'll do so because it’s just a must then please don’t because you will lose
alot of things in your life.
I hope formal education could be the more effective one, but now it couldn’t.
So I think the informal is more effective and I hope one day they could be merged with
each other.