Foreign Policy Research Institute A Nation Must Think Before it Acts Teaching About the Middle East at the High School Level

Teaching About the Middle East at the High School Level

  • Adam Garfinkle
  • December 20, 1999
  • Middle East Program
  • Program on Teaching about the Middle East

As anyone who has tried knows, teaching teenagers about places far away, and in which they have no particular knowledge or special interest, is a challenge. It is especially a  challenge when typical American teenagers—generally affluent, monolingual, and seemingly secure in a post-Cold War world—compose the target audience. Of course, clever teachers have at their disposal any number of pedagogical gimmicks with which to stimulate interest. But, as Fiorello LaGuardia once said, “Tickertape ain’t spaghetti,” by which he meant that after the glitz wears off, one must get back to basics. The same thing is true in education: at some point, students-cleverly stimulated or not-have got to do some work.

Most high school students are not going to become scholars and theorists in the humanities and social sciences. But most will go to college and be called upon to write research papers. When it comes to learning about other parts of the world, the best high school preparation for such tasks should include basic definitions and a knowledge of which metrics matter in the realm of “comparative political sociology”—which is what is actually being taught.

What follows is a series of sample assignments in key areas designed to illustrate such tasks with specific reference to the Greater Middle East. The key areas identified, which are virtually the same for all regions, are demography, geography, economics, social composition, political organization, military power, and ideology. The assignments have been written “up” to roughly undergraduate university level. They can, of course, be simplified to different specifications.

Demography

Assignment

What difference does it make how “young” or “old” populations are? Compare Jordan and Japan demographically, and explain the economic, military, and political significance of the differences between them.

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

mean population age; intersection of birth and death rates; ratio of workers to non-workers in a society, and the implications for investment and pension funds; labor mobility; the economic dimensions of immigration; demands on education and services.

Geography

Assignment

What difference do rivers, deserts, and mountains make in the development of a society and culture? Compare and contrast Syria, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia in this regard.

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

riparian relations; hydrology; irrigation; social isolation/insularity; trade routes and cultural diffusion; population densities; labor stratification; vertical and horizontal nomadism; sedentary agriculture.

Economics

Assignment

Why are some countries richer than others? How important is the natural resource endowment of a country compared with its social and human capital? Examine these questions by comparing the economic circumstances, history, and structure of Kuwait with those of Turkey.

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

human and social capital; gross national product vs. gross domestic product; per capita income; relative deprivation; productivity indices; labor profiles; factor endowments; trade, finance, and investment patterns; tax systems; rentier economies; public vs. private sectors.

Social Composition

Assignment

Social stability is often a function of social cohesiveness, and social cohesiveness is affected by perceived differences among groups of people. Most Middle Eastern countries are heterogeneous to some extent, but some much more than others. Compare and contrast Iraq and Iran in this regard. What have been the implications for social stability and political culture in these two countries, and what have been the implications for relations between these two countries.

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

heterogeneity/homogeneity; ethnicity; sectarianism; Sunni and Shi`a Islam; Arab and Persian/Iranian, Baluch, Azeri; Iran-Iraq War; spatial population distributions; irredentism; empire; language and national identity; the difference between the words “country,” “nation,” “state,” and “nation-state.”

Political Organization

Assignment

Not all states are organized politically in the same way. The main differences in political organization come down to three features: the nature and level of accountability between rulers and ruled; the sources of political authority; and the relationship of law to political processes. Examine the political organization of two non-democratic countries-Sudan and Uzbekistan-and emphasize their differences with respect to these three features of political organization.

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

totalitarianism vs. authoritarianism; paternalism and patronage; political recruitment patterns; Islamic “fundamentalism” vs. Islamic orthodoxy; Sufism; Mahdiya; Timur; Khanate; Hassan al-Turabi; Islam Karimov; “the invention of tradition”; pan-Islamism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Turkism; tribalism and clan affinity; political participation; polyarchy; primordial vs. associational ties.

Military Power

Assignment

Aside from literal defense, military power has three functions: to compel others, to deter others, and to reassure others. Alliances form, in part, because of the complementarity of military power seen against common or overlapping political and diplomatic interests. On this basis, analyze the rationale-from both sides-of the recent Israeli-Turkish entente. In other words, how has the alliance been used so far, and how may it be used in future, to compel, deter, and reassure selected others?

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

balance-of-power, coalition warfare; the Ocalan affair; military-to-military aspects of bilateral relationships; economic aspects of alliance; transactional analysis; the “Turkish model” of reformist Islam; Israel’s “peripheral strategy”; strategic air space.

Ideology

Assignment

It has been said that three things drive political life: money, the will to power, and passionate ideas. Ideology can encompass various kinds of passionate ideas-nationalism, religious zealotry, and so forth-but ideology can also be thought of as the set of beliefs that underlie the social, economic, and political organization of a polity. When basic beliefs are taken for granted by the vast majority, the political order is normal, or routinized. When basic beliefs are subjected to debate or are otherwise thrown in question, the political order is under challenge, and the possibility of upheaval or revolution looms. Examine the ideological basis of two Muslim states-Afghanistan and Egypt. To what extent are they “normal” or routinized polities, and to what extent are they proto-revolutionary ones?

Vocabulary, Concepts, and Metrics Students Would Have to Understand to do this Assignment: 

revolution; nationalism; charisma; Taliban, Free Officers; Arab Socialism; Muslim Brotherhood; Nasser’s Three Circles; Pashtuns/Pathans; mass/elite distinction; political mobilization; political  socialization; alienation; intellectuals; political opportunism.