Postcard from Dubai
Roy Blatchford
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The Dubai skyline exceeds expectations, refracting desert sun with a shattering intensity. Buildings like sculptured pokers defy the expected rules of gravity. Reputedly, a quarter of the world’s construction cranes are hosted here, many in suspended animation courtesy of the global slow-down. Echoes of Ozymandias and his ‘vast and trunkless legs of stone’ resonate.
White, white sand and vivid green lawns lie side by side as though splashed from a child’s paint-box. Desalinated water is the liquid gold.
The apocryphal shopping malls beat to a consumer drum almost alone now on the planet. A breathtaking helter-skelter bisects one mall, another sports the largest snow-dome ever constructed. Atlantis is the famed water-park guaranteed to thrill children and terrify parents in equal measure.
The sheer scale takes your breath away. A billboard stretching out across the sands heralds ‘Another 19 million square feet of quality healthcare’. The next international airport under construction has a footprint the size of Swindon, while the grand design of the current one dwarfs quaint Terminal 5 at Heathrow.
Overstated opulence and understated poverty lie uncomfortably close together. The army of ants who crawl over every building site are largely Indian workers earning $200 a month. The same sum buys tea for two in the iconic Burj Al Arab, the landmark hotel floating on its own man-made island.
This is a city where prospectors have arrived like a gold rush, a modern-day Tower of Babel. Yet dig behind the surface glitz and there is a renewed vision of a society which stretches back to antiquity.
‘Education. Education. Education.’ Familiar words? They are the clarion call of Sheikh Mohammed Al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai. The Knowledge and Human Development Agency was born a few years ago with the express aim of creating a knowledge and skills economy to rival the best. Intent on ensuring a world-class schools system, the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau is auditing every establishment, public and private, in its jurisdiction. All curriculum models are here: UAE, Indian, IB, German, Iranian, US, Russian, Philippine, Japanese.
Amidst a fascinating educational diaspora, my interest is captured by the government provision.
Journeys to visit schools begin in impossible rush-hour traffic, continue on spacious highways of ingenious engineering, and end down dusty tracks best negotiated by 4x4s and a driver with a good horn. Welcomes to the playground begin with a hundred handshakes, followed in the Principal’s office by black Arabic coffee and a platter of delicious sweetmeats – and it’s only 7am.
Inspecting and reviewing schools through an interpreter arrests one’s seasoned eyes and ears. Leadership and management, teaching and learning, students’ personal development – the key ingredients don’t change essentially from Dubai to Mumbai, New York to London. Yet cultural nuances matter profoundly.
In one school I watch a skilled team of teachers of English make me look afresh at my own language. Native speakers of Arabic, with few resources beyond a lacklustre textbook and battling the incessant air-conditioning, impress with their passion for the subject - a desire to open up new horizons for the children they serve. During a later meeting they are thirsty for professional development. We discuss how English as a language is being reconfigured, fabulously and inventively, by billions of people around the world who are making it their Esperanto.
In a desert climate, children react to rare torrential rain in the way UK children respond to a few inches of snow: a mad dash for the playground to soak themselves. Attendance is down in one school, according to the welfare officer, 'because it rained yesterday'. We know it rained because whole hallways and corridors are drying out.
At another school, Tuesday morning sees suspension of the normal timetable in pursuit of mixed-age learning activities, chosen by the children. Some are dual storytelling in Arabic and English; some are running a fresh fruit stall; others are cutting up fresh fish, while others still are creating brightly coloured artefacts linked to their Islamic Studies.
Assemblies are unashamedly nationalistic and rooted in Islam. They are led powerfully by the children and, in this climate, are held outdoors to everyone’s pleasure. They cause me to reflect on the purpose of the many hundreds of assemblies I have led and observed: what does it mean to be a British citizen today, and do we celebrate this?
All Grade 8 students, boys and girls alike, have a module of active civic duty, school and community based with smart uniforms provided. These young 21st century citizens have an impressive understanding of their allegiances to both Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and of its historic creation in 1971 out of the Trucial States.
Here lies a different axis of power. The Emirates look west historically to Europe and America, but their current and future interests lie profoundly with one another, and with India and China.
An interesting debate unfolds in the pages of the Gulf News: should there be a quota for expatriate students in public schools that would allow children from different cultures to meet? And this in a city where only about 15% of the total population are Emiratis, the rest from just any place you can name on the planet.
What particular images am I left with? Primary-aged children marching with rifles as part of the curriculum; short plays enacting the Middle East conflict which challenge my own prejudices; feeding back inspection findings to a team of women robed in burkas; joyful children hungry for learning and a passion to learn English; teachers, creative as they are the world over; a society seeking to modernise without westernising.
I look forward to my return.
Roy Blatchford, Director of the National Education Trust, has recently been inspecting schools in Dubai.
Wake up in the morning
Stretch your arms towards the sun
Say something in Chinese
And go to Paris....
Every minute, somewhere in the world there is morning
Somewhere, people stretch their arms towards the sun
They speak new languages, fly from Cairo to Warsaw
They smile and drink coffee together.
Anastasia Baburova
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