SO....What is next!!!
Hello dear friends,
I had great hopes for 2011way before it started. Now after the noble revolutions starting in different parts of Africa I am even more hopeful. Hopeful because finally people know how much their opinion counts, how much their ideas count and how much can be done just by taking the right decision or even taking any decision at all. The greatest duty to people in those countries and in other countries is to know that from now on there is no way anyone could be relieved of his duties towards everything going on in their countries. You can't be negative you have to contribute to the welfare of your country by every means possible.
For long you might hear some people say "I am not a politician, leave politics to politicians" of course this also goes to all disciplines of life and literally giving away your brain for someone else to think, analyze and deduce for you......well that is not acceptable anymore.....you need to read and do all that for yourself!!!! .... your opinion counts and you need to understand because you will be held accountable for your choices and preferences.
So, how to start and how to do that??
My opinion is to promote for creativity and scientific thinking. The main idea of scientific thinking is to find clues that prove as well as clues that disprove your idea. Though it might sound crazy, but this is the principal of scientific research or at least good research. If a scientist claims an idea and start looking for support for it while ignoring the clues against it he will be distorting the whole picture. The danger of "one way thinking" is to promote for dictatorship and paving the way for emotions to run our lives instead of taking matters in our hands and thoroughly discuss the with and the against in every decision we make. Scientists for ages used the "two way thinking" or scientific thinking because that is the only guarantee to meaningful and high quality deductions and facts, so I guess it is time to ask yourself what if and what if not in all matters of life. Scientific thinking is a taught skill and a lot of books and curricula have been authored all over the world to promote for it.
Creativity !!! .....unfortunately a lot of people think that being creative is an inborn trait just like being tall or short.... Well....of course not!!! creativity can be taught as well. Learning how to think outside the box is a subject of many lecturers and books as well. Ways of teaching are among the key elements for student to grasp the idea of creativity. Promoting for unconventional ways of teaching is important and I call that you should start by yourself. Take it upon yourself not to give any lecture, seminar or even a social talk with your students in a plain way anymore, instead surprise them with new tasks and innovative duties.
There are a lot for these nations to do (please refer to Ahmed Allam's comment on our previous post "Egypt 2.0") and I totally agree with that, so let's start with what we as individuals can do, together with our complete contribution to the rapidly evolving situation around us in our great countries, so we can carry it to a better place and make it a better home.
So what is your occupation and how do you see your contribution?
Image Credit by Nevit Dilmen (Wikimedia)
@ Ahmed...I accept the concept of course....I want to take all our hopes and ambition to the real world as I said before.... I just need to surf this website thoroughly first and I will get back to you...it contains a lot of shortcuts and links so I will answer you soon....I hope everybody share this info too.
@Shimaa...I have posted a new topic specially for you today about scholarships ...I hope you find it interesting...and please feel free to ask any questions or give your opinion about any subject you need to discuss and I will lauch a discussion about it ASAP...:))
Dear All,
We have to organize some plan with a schedule so that we can stop brain storming after some time and start executing a specific project. Lets say that we establish some sort of NGO or something like that. A friend of me who is working as a lawer asked me to join http://www.ecipit.org.eg/ so that we can activate some departments there. We can join the scientific one so that we investigaes how we can start playing our roles. Please take a look at the website so that if it is ok for you we can start from an established organization not from scratch.
I talked with some of my professors and they already have their requirements to change to better environments. Lets start to plan for Strong, Active Egypt
I hope to convert these ideas to an action soon
i have read your article . so admired much i like critical thinking in general. sometmes brainstorming come to my mind in general sothat i like tehnologies especially if related to be applied medically . hope one day to an opportunity of travelling abroad to europe through scholarships or whatelse? that provide to me learning what is updated to medical biotechnology and how be applied clincally doaa, could you help me in achieving it really? hope that our endemic diseases be finalized by applied technology in it want to make it in reality.......... hope to help me doaa , so grateful and thankful
Sorry it took me some time to answer you back, the reason is because I am taking this matter seriously and I would like to share actively in “What is next”. I am gathering all the ideas mentioned and I hope we also get more and more ideas from others as well. So we can have a strong base where we can build an active community.
@Ahmed: I greatly admire your vision and I would like you be a part of the team I am calling for!!!
@Mohamed: let me tell you…you are far from being a pessimist…you are actually an optimist.. because only the optimistic people think of the problems and the reasons behind it in order to find venues to overcome it and make it better, Please consider to be a part of our team too
you can find some info or the starting info for the team in our new post ... and let us all hope we can be a part of a successful example
I am completely agree with you. It was the finest revolution world wide. However, I do not wanna be a pessimistic person, the big deal is not just changing people or characters; but changing the personality itself to the community, improving the thinking conception, putting the science in top of our periorities, developing the way of researching, respecting the system and laws as well as respecting each other. There is not a care about quality in Egypt and favouritism ,unfortunately, is the lead concept instead of qualifications.
It begins with developing the syllebus of all schools' levels from filling the brain with smart non-effective information to smart effective information. It is not the wisdom to order young naive students to know and study all of that without any useful output. In addition to try to adapt them to know how to research for their brain development and to love reading. In other words,nearly, all the graduates do not read or gain any further information, also ,nearly, all of them are independent on themselves.
As well as computer and English high level educations are a must, for instance during each summer vacation and during the school.
Lets come to the ironic actions in all colleges. The system must be changed in all colleges and the way which professors deal with the students must be changed as well. For example, according to the scientific colleges why do not we use Hologram as an additive educational tool. Umm, where are our sofisticated research centers besides governmental research institutes?! Why is not any of our universities on the list of best universities world wide?! why do not we put a system of interviews before introducing to any college instead of the useless secondary high school level examinations? Why always the scientific details are trivial to us?
It was not our governmental's fault only but ours too. The caring about human being's value must be important in our country. The way of rising our kids ,from the rich or the poor, is almost improper.
I do not wanna talk too much; but I see a big mess in drugs' market in Egypt. The ministry of health must be more organized and developed. The relationships between doctors and pharmaceutical companies are so weird and should be under control without any excuses.
The next step is filling the gapes and upgrading the improper actions.
I agree with you totally Doaa. Creative thinking is the reason for the progress we live now in the 21st centurey. Special theory of relativity is a philosophical innovative thinking that exceded the traditional constants. It becomes clear that the creativity won over accumulated knowledge, and I hope we can increase our innovation and dreams in order not only to achieve a scientific progress but also to solve our daily life problems like traffic.
For achieving a scientific progress I have some ideas which I would like to share with you
1- It is the time now for our scientists abroad to return back as they catch up with the current progress and even if some of them can not return they can provide us with scientific programs and share their ideas with us
2- The departments chairs have to be selected based on their qualifications and experience not age or loyality.
3- We have to conern with technical education and link the education with market. Let me here share a real experience which I saw in Armenia where a deal between a university and a big company that the first two years the students learn in the university and the remainder they totally are training in the company and I saw how they are really experienced people with very active and intelligent way of thinking.
4- Discovering talented people and give them a special treatment in education and fund.
5- It is time now for the money to be spent on what is really important not on actors and fottball players. Bussinessmen have to participate in the educational fund and this has to be due to their feeling of responsibility.
6- Stop importing all useless goods and save these mony for industrial applications.
7- As I am working in the digital design, I see that this field needs a governmental gudence as till now it stands by individual contribution.
8- Universities have to be joined by qualifications not the degrees. Also, there are som subjects though they are important like Arabic, may let somone not join his preferred faculty so I d like to give a waiting factor for the subjects based on the faculty the student is applying for.
9- We have to raise the team work level as the scientific progress rarely now achieved by one person. This must be dealed from secondary schools and even earlier.
10- I have an idea that the knowledge transfer should be done between professors and RAs and RAs and students. Here I can share an experience where I asked an RA to create scientific groups led by RAs and I worked with an RA in his master researc h and he explained many things to me that raised my knowlede so much. Also a collegue did the same thing. However, the remainder students got bored fast and do not continue. I think this idea will benefit both student and RA at the same time since the RA will focus on hard problems letting less hard problems and implementation issues to students which is enough for their knowledge to participate in fields they even do not study in their classes
I d like to give a hint that ideas without implementation can not lead to something so we would like to put plans to execute them
This is some of many. Please share me your ideas in order to make our future brighter
