Education reform requires training educators to promote tolerance, dialogue — panellists

AMMAN — In efforts towards educational reform, more focus should be on training the teachers on common humanitarian values, religious leaders and media specialists agreed on Wednesday.

Speaking on the second day of the conference on Interreligious Dialogue on Diversity, Tolerance and Social Cohesion in the Arab Region that concluded in Amman, Mohammad Khalifah, the director of Al Qaradawi Centre for Islamic Moderation and Renewal in Qatar, said the developments brought on by globalisation require changes in education.

He stressed the need to amend school curricula to encourage “respecting the other”, and promote dialogue and tolerance. 

“We should start with our Islamic religious school curricula and produce teachers who are capable of adjusting with the change,” Khalifah said during a panel discussion held at the conference, which was organised by the UNDP and the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue. 

Participants included Muslim and Christian religious figures, education specialists and media representatives from 25 countries in the region.

Discussions on the second day covered issues such as education reform and the media.

Father Rifat Bader, director of the Catholic Centre for Studies, said changing the curricula is crucial to safeguarding Christian presence in the region.

“This is the year of mercy, as Pope Francis announced it, and thus we should encourage the culture of bonding and not exclusion,” Bader added.

For Ali Khashan, president of the Global Centre for Justice and Humanity in Palestine, the changes should cover all textbooks, not just those on religious education, since there is a gap between what students learn and what is applied in real life.  

Speaking at the conference on the role of the media, Gisele Khoury, a member of the Global Forum for Media Development’s steering committee, said journalists must not shy away from covering issues related to religion. 

“These are deep issues that journalists should be able to tackle freely and professionally as Western media do,” said Khoury, who is also president of the Samir Kassir Foundation in Lebanon, adding that she believes that separating religion from the state is the main step for societies’ progress.

“We [Christians] are the sons and partners of this land, and, personally, I don’t believe in the term ‘tolerance’, since Christians and Muslims have always lived together,” she added.