TEACHING DEMOCRACY IN POST-ARAB SPRING

The Arab Spring, which swept through a number of Arab countries directly and the rest indirectly, raised strong feelings towards democracy.The wish for democracy, especially among the youth, who make up more than forty percent of the population of the Arab world, needs a favorable school environment that transforms it into democratic values and skills commensurate with children and youth. The teacher is a critical success factor in teaching democracy initiatives. Thus, changes in what teachers teach, how, and how they relate to their students are important factors in teaching basic skills and habits of democracy. Restructuring education in the Arab world to produce democratic-minded citizens requires "the independence of education from the ideological hegemony of the political elite, whether theocratic or secular." Teaching democracy is not just a political imperative. It is certainly an ethical idea through which the teacher educates and engages students in the three basic pillars of democracy: citizenship, social justice and pluralism. In this paper, we examine shifting towards democracy in the Arab world through the perspective of educational reform in general and pedagogical reform in particular. Our focus on educational reform is on two assumptions. The first is that teachers have an ethical responsibility to students in order to learn about the practice of democratic values including citizenship, social justice and pluralism. The second assumption, which builds on the first, is that what teachers do and how they do it is the main key to preparing students to participate in democracy. That is, the teacher is the catalyst by which students can be transformed into peaceful, productive and engaged democratic citizens.