Many of the things that America has tried to export, or force, upon societies the Middle East -- such as "freedom" and "democracy" -- are now in disrepute, in part because these lofty goals often masked policies based more on self-interest than idealism. But American-style education hasn't lost its capacity to inspire. As the chairman of the school's board of trustees told me: "The one thing almost everyone in the Middle East respects is American education. People may complain about US policies, but at the end of the day they want to send their children to American schools."
One of the reasons is that American education is still so popular is because it has a noble history in the region. In the late 19th and early 20th century American missionaries in the Middle East realized that they weren't going to convert many Muslims to Christianity, and redirected their efforts towards building schools and universities. At the time, the Arab Middle East was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and American missionary education became part of the Wilsonian project of bringing self determination to subject and colonized people throughout the world.
American missionaries did this not by preaching regime change and revolution, but by teaching the skills necessary for enlightened citizenship. American educators played an important role in reviving Arabic as a living literary language, and many of the institutions they built -- like the American University of Beirut -- are thriving today.
But anther reason American education is popular is because its values are universally applicable. Pragmatism, analytical thinking, open discussion, self-reliance -- these are antidotes not just to autocratic regimes abut also to arrogant superpowers.
In the coming years, as the cost in life and treasure from the war in Iraq mounts, and the failures of the Bush interventionist foreign polices come crashing down on all our heads, it will be tempting for our country to retreat into isolationism and a bitterness. Let the Middle East solve its own problems! (Even if we had a hand in creating them.) But the American missionaries of the Wilsonian era, and in their own way, the Deerfield teachers who have set up a boarding school in Jordan, have shown us a different path. With idealism and humility, we just might save the Middle East, and we just might save ourselves.
Source: Time Middle East Blog
