Abstracts of contributions written in Arabic

1/ Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, Education and Revolution

Prof. Suad I Ahmed's contribution to this issue was a lecture presented at Omdurman Ahlia university in July 1996. Why education? Was the initial question posited as an introduction to establish the bond between revolution and education. Education in a class- ridden society is a tool for organizing labour by transferring knowledge to younger generations, equipping them with the necessary weapons for the vicious fight for survival in real life. It is also a means for enhancing economic development. Within a class society, education is considered as one of domains of class struggle, which eventually lead to the essentially significant question: Is educational impartial?

The author argues that it is essentially biased in real life, as it relates serves the interests of the dominating classes and categories of people. Democracy in education entails providing unconditionally free educational services, at both primary and secondary levels, to all citizens and makes tertiary level education available on demand.

Against the un-evidenced claims of consecutive governments, a very small minority of people actually benefited from the formal public educational services provided. The situation has worsened by the advent of the NIF régime.50% of all Sudanese children at school age do not receive any sort of education whatsoever, as such services are not available at where they dwell, or because of the high fees levied  on pupils . The state has completely abandoned the right of free basic education. Such policies have lead to widening the class discrimination gap. The number of illiterate citizens now exceeds 18 million citizens.

Democracy in Education simply means making free basic education available to all children regardless to ethnicity, race or faith, or any other parameter for that matter. It also entails exploring innovative methods to avail nomads and remote villagers with education and enable the poor to get the education they want.

The new generations are very much aware of the fact that the three military dictatorships that ruled the Sudan since independence, have strived to make the most out of the educational syllabi  to serve their own agenda against the desired objective of serving the populace at large and consolidating the multicultural , multiethnic and multi-faith  unity of the country. Yet the NIF dictatorship has surpassed all boundaries and crossed redlines by imposing their ideological tenets on the educational system, smothering free thinking, and suffocating creative and intellectual endeavors.
This policy is only one aspect of a wider subversive one, which erodes the unity of our country, oppresses its diversity, wastes its resources and imposes strict monopoly on economical, social and trade unionist activities, to possess alone the decision-making in all fields of activities.

Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, Specialist in Educational issues .She is a university professor. She was the driving force behind the establishment of the Institute of Extramural Studies, at the University of Khartoum, which has helped a lot in availing thousands of Sudanese with a chance for a proper education.
She is the founder of the Sudanese Film Club and one of the pioneer activists in of the feminist movement in the Sudan. She played a very much apprecited role in developing marginalized areas  in Nuba Mountains , Halfa and New Halfa.

2/ Mohamed Jalaal Haashim, Towards a method for reviving the Sudanese heritage: Nubian culture as a case study.

The author sums up his research in the following words: "we have strived, as hard as we could avail, to delineate the practical dimensions of the mechanisms for reviving the Sudanese Nubian heritage, taking Nubian culture as a case study. We aimed at defining an empirical methodology providing practical steps for implementing the revival process. This attempt is perhaps one of the first in this domain. We harbor no claims of perfection or near perfection. Any meticulous scrutiny of this work could come up with a heap of defects and shortcomings, which are most welcome. This is exactly the aim of this research: inciting researchers to conduct a methodological approach to Sudanese Nubian cultural heritage surpassing this paper by finding out its imperfections.   

Mohamed Jalaal Haashim, Sudanese linguist, researcher in Sudanese cultures and languages.

3/ Sidgi Kaballo, Democratisation of Education

This article discusses the concept of the democratisation of education on three levels:

1. The first level is the level of generalisation of general education for all children at the age of education by making education compulsory and free of charge and making the right of further and higher education to be determined by the student’s intellectual ability and capabilities rather than the ability to pay.

2. The second level is the level of syllabuses and courses that enable the pupils and students to develop methods and methodologies of learning and researching although their life, to enable pupils and students from early ages to learn the relativity of facts and the multiplicity of approaches and theories.

3. The third level is the democratisation of education institutes and their management.

The article attempts to discuss the measures and policies that are necessary to achieve all three levels of democratisation in both the general and the high education.

The author argues that democratisation of the general education at both the primary and secondary levels must include the horizontal expansion of schools and the vertical improvement of the quality of education. The base for democratisation is the free supply of education and the even distribution of education institutions, which are well equipped with teaching and learning materials and staffed with well-trained teachers and instructors, all over the country. The author suggests that the syllabuses and courses of the general education must enhance the learners’ abilities to continue education and/or to join the labour force by theoretical and practical learning and training. The author argues that the democratisation of the management of the schools must be based on and develop the parents council and the student unions traditions.

The articles discusses the conditions that make the intake to the universities is based on a real policy of equal opportunities. It also discusses the freedom of research and thought in universities. The article also discusses the democratisation of the management of higher education and the participation of staff, students and civil society students.    

Sidgi Kaballo, Sudanese economist, lawyer and human rights activist. He lives in the United Kingdom.

4/ Yahya Fadlalla, Garang Deng Paul

Garang Paul Deng is one of the victims of the Shari’a laws ,known as the September laws in Sudan imposed by the Islamist allied to the regime of general Ga’afer Neimeiri , who was ousted by a popular upraise in April 1985. During the interim period, the author had shared a house with the dramatist El-Sammani Lwal and a German photographer who was actively involved ,then, in giving support to the victims of the Shari’a laws through his extensive relations with human rights organizations. The shared dwelling has provided an opportune chance for the author, to establish intimate relations with many victims who have had their limbs amputated, record their stories, and have insights into the intimate details of their lives. Garang was one of those victims.

Yahya Fadlalla, Sudanese playwright, actor, story writer and poet. He lives in Canada.

5/ Abdelatif Elfaki Identity and Ontological Forgetfulness

The paper distinguishes three separate worlds: the world of history, the sacred world, and the world of fantasy, depending on  the rules governing each domain respectively, and invariably relevant only to the specific world. In other words, it would be impossible to handle the world of fantasy applying rules applicable only to that of history, for example.

In fact, the world of fantasy has been actively engaged in reformulating the everydayness ecstasy representing fantasy as history. Hence, it was possible to claim that, the elements of Sudanese cultural diversity were perpetually denied actual realization.

Apparently, this action of fantasy has been represented in state ideological apparatuses, particularly in pedagogy, mass media, and legislation. It has been, also, represented by everyday language within certain register clusters. Fantasy, as an alternative of the world of history, has always been the leaven for several Sudanese elite discourses.

The paper points out the essence of the contradictory position in which the binary opposition "Arabs/Africans" keeps stating or revealing itself, as natural and historical facts. The paper attempts to alleviate this contradiction by studying phenomena of some stylistic clusters produced by monolingual Arabic speech.

Abdelatif Elfaki, Sudanese writer. He lives in the United States.