Mustafa, my neighbor, is 11 years old and quit school three months ago. He goes to work seven days a week at 7 in the morning, takes off from 2-3 for lunch, and then finishes around 7. He's a stacker at the local supermarket and makes $100 a month.
This might sound shocking. But in my neighborhood, it's very common. I see kids everyday working. Our conversations go something like this. (Mind you, they're in Arabic.)
"Why aren't you in school?"
"I quit."
"Why?"
"School sucks. This (i.e. working) is better."
Sometimes there are other reasons. Like the Syrians or Egyptians don't know the system and don't have the right papers to enter the public school. (I'm working on this and contacting people who can give me accurate information so I can pass it along to them.)
But for the most part, the Lebanese education system doesn't work. The curriculum is too hard, and the teaching methods are antiquated. The Lebanese like to praise themselves for having the best education in the Middle East. Lebanese people are known for having good English and good French. It's because of the "French system." A system, based on rote memorization and public humiliation, that the French reformed decades ago. All educational research proves that the methods don't work.
Maybe less than 1/3 of Lebanese people over the age of 20 have a high school diploma. The numbers actually are extremely difficult to find. An education professor at the American University of Beirut told me that those numbers aren't published. In the US, 84% of adults have a high school diploma. The few high school graduates in Lebanon are really, really smart, maybe the smartest 10% of the population, or rich and somehow paid for it. A student has to have someone explain the lessons at home. Without educated parents or a tutor, most kids are doomed to fail.
I go to Mustafa's house at least three times a week to tutor his older brother, who's in 8th grade and is very weak in math. (Though the stuff he's studying is what I was taking as an advanced 9th grader.) He might have to repeat this year. Today, their mom and I visited the school and the teacher said that the youngest one, 7-year-old Yahya, will definately have to repeat the first grade.
I ask his parents, "Why don't you just keep Mustafa locked up all day in his room, with no television and no computer? After staring at the wall all day, he'll be begging to go to school." One of his parents are always at home.
"We can't. He will just run out and play. It's better for him to be at work and doing something."
I can't tell if they like having the extra income. His parents let him use $33 for spending money. The rest they use for the house. Because they are very poor, they won't even save it for his hopeful future schooling.
"So he's rewarded for not going to school. $33 a month is a lot for an 11-year-old."
But they say they can't convince him. He was kicked out of one school in the fifth grade, after repeatedly failing and then behaving badly. He even started wetting his bed at night because he was so stressed out. The next school he went to didn't have a good playground or his old friends, so he just quit. He says he won't go back, and he knows a guy who's going to teach him how to work with aluminum, and that's what he's going to do for the rest of his life.
So here's the dilemma.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
