I can see the path to the state of Palestine. And education is an integral part of it.
Palestinians have always prided themselves on being among the highest educated among all Arabs, but if this was true in the past, it is not true anymore, and it is certainly not true for Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Sure, the illiteracy rate is very low. And it is true that Palestinians continue to seek basic and higher education, but in the last few decades the level of Palestinian education has suffered and local universities have had to lower their standards in order to be able to accept the recent high school graduates. Continue Reading »
Jordanian children will be able to hear and see televised news geared to them in the near future. A memorandum of understanding to introduce the internationally known Kids News program to Jordanian kids was signed Saturday at the Dead Seas between the Dutch based Free Voice by Bart Dijkstra with Jordan’s Community Media Network by Daoud Kuttab. The Dutch Ambassador to Jordan Johanna van Vliet, and the newly chosen director of Free Voice Jan Bonjer also attended the signing event.
The MOU expects an 18 month project that will begin with intensive two month training followed by weekly broadcasts and ending with daily broadcasts of a television news program geared to Jordanian children primarily between 10-14 years old. Continue Reading »
RAMALLAH – Television penetration in Palestine is nearly 100 percent. Almost every home-no matter how poor the family-has a tube in its sitting room. Television viewership is higher than average amongst Palestinians for two main reasons: Because of the continuing conflict, people feel the need to watch television to keep up with the events in the news that directly affect their lives. Also, with high levels of insecurity and troubles outside the home, the television is often the only source of entertainment.
But although Palestinian families spend many hours a day glued to their TV sets, original Palestinian children’s programming is almost non-existent. Instead, hours of dubbed Japanese and other types of cartoons fill the airwaves, especially in key children’s viewing hours. Such dubbed programming usually falls into one of three potentially disadvantageous categories; it is dubbed into classical Arabic (in order to ensure sales in all 23 Arab countries), it consists of imported programming with violent content, or it revolves around religious themes. Continue Reading »
I had to rub my eyes a few times to be sure that what I was seeing was real. The setting was downtown Ramallah. The event, International Youth Day. The participants were wearing white T-shirts with logos on the front and back and blood red hats.
The International Youth Day, in which these Palestinians from all over the West Bank were participating, was organised by a network of youth NGOs called “ We are Palestineâ€. The theme of this year was “We will be as much as we can dreamâ€. Continue Reading »