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Female Teachers in KSA?
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007

Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 2684
Location: UK/Veteran of the Magic Kingdom

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:36 pm Post subject:

ootii wrote:

Saudis generally regard foreign workers as a kind of slave

Any foreign workers? Including for example Americans and British with blue/green eyes? Or only the poor, deprived, under-classified, under-paid, ill-treated, etc, etc, like Indians, Pilipino, Bengalis, ..etc..etc �..

Quote:

..They will keep the teachers salaries a couple of months in arrears just to "make sure" they don't quit

In any case, the teachers cannot quit without an exit visa!
So, they could pay him, and hold his exit visa so that he cannot escape!

Quote:

I was hired locally and got the full expat package, including tickets to a remote Western state for my whole family, including Arab wife

According to the Saudi University regulation for non-Saudis, any foreigner who is recruited locally is not entitled, for example, to get tickets for himself or for his family. And, I guess this rule may apply for the other academic institutions.

Quote:

If your employers are well-connected, they can do just about anything for you.

I won't be surprised this things happening in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Of course, this is the rules of WASTA in Saudi Arabia (corruption of the administration and lack of competency and no respect for their own regulations!!).

ootii wrote:

] She made friends with one of the local bank tellers who watches the account and calls her when someone makes a deposit. Then she dashes across the road to cash her check. She's the only one who gets her money regularly - because the bank is next door.

This is a practical example of a WASTA in Saudi Arabia.
If you know, or have links to someone in any government or private institution to serve you and to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others. (in other words, it is a 'friendly' corruption).
So the question is the following:

Is WASTA = CORRUPTION??? TRUE OR FALSE? AND WHY?

BTW, definition of Corruption:
" CORRUPTION - An act done with an intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others. It includes bribery, but is more comprehensive; because an act may be corruptly done, though the advantage to be derived from it be not offered by another." (http://www.lectlaw.com/)

Cleopatra wrote:

I have found the state-run health care services here to be pretty good: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

It depends on what you mean by 'prety good'?
If I take my reference of health care as , for example, the UK health system or French system, in this case the Saudi state health system is a disaster! Especially in the sense of management and corruption! Sometimes, is the law of 'Wasta' which enable you to get better health treatment in the State Saudi health system (in case if they have better treatment!).
All other things about state health system is chaotic in the pure sense of the word.

veiledsentiments

Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:39 pm Post subject:

007 wrote:

ootii wrote:

Saudis generally regard foreign workers as a kind of slave

Yes, 007... all foreign workers...

Slavery too has different ranks. And slavery has never been restricted by race or color - and it still isn't in the Gulf.

VS

Cleopatra

Joined: 28 Jun 2003
Posts: 3657
Location: Tuamago Archipelago

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:57 pm Post subject:

Quote:

If I take my reference of health care as , for example, the UK health system or French system, in this case the Saudi state health system is a disaster!

What's your experience of the British health care system? From what I've heard, it's far from being one of the best in the world. And of course, we can all come up with horror stories about friends who have had lousy treatment in Saudi hospitals, just as people in France, the US, or even Sweden could do too. All I said was that in my (thankfully limited) experience, the Saudi health care system is pretty good, and in no need of being transformed into a US style cash cow for private businesses.

Quote:

VS already answered your question. I'll just add that anyone who thinks that having blue (or blue/green) eyes and an MA spares them from being anything other than high-class slaves in the (brown?) eyes of Gulf Arabs, is either naive and/or new to the region. High-class Gastarbeiters we may be, but high-class Gastarbeiters are still Gastarbeiters at the end of the day, whatever we may fool ourselves into thinking.

007

Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 2684
Location: UK/Veteran of the Magic Kingdom

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject:

Cleopatra wrote:

..What's your experience of the British health care system?

I have more than 20 years experience with British health care, and more than 10 years with Saudi state health care and private ones (Saudi-german hospital + Al-Magrebi + other private hospitals), and I can guarantee you that the British health care is much, much better (10 to the power 10) than the Saudi one (from the point of view management, quality control, administration, professionalism, reception, services, you name it). The other thing which I guarantee you is, that in Saudi state health care, the foreigners are not treated equally as Saudis, and this is from my experience and other foreigner experiences, plus you need some kind of WASTA (corruption) to get some kind of services from the best hospitals in SA.
I know of a close friend, who was working as radiologist consultant in one of the Saudi hospital, and unfortunately he got brain cancer, and he asked to be transferred to one of the specialized hospital in Riyadh, but unfortunately his request was refused!!!!!! And he was obliged to travel to France to get decent and dignified treatment (Even though he was a consultant in one of the state Saudi hospital). Do you call this pretty good health care system!!!??

But, I can tell you that, at least, some of the private hospitals in SA are much better than state Saudi hospitals.
I did not say that the SA health care should be transformed into US model to be acceptable, my reference was not a USnian health care!

Quote:

I'll just add that anyone who thinks that having blue (or blue/green) eyes and an MA spares them from being anything other than high-class slaves in the (brown?) eyes of Gulf Arabs, is either naive and/or new to the region. High-class Gastarbeiters we may be, but high-class Gastarbeiters are still Gastarbeiters at the end of the day, whatever we may fool ourselves into thinking.

It does not matter if your eyes are blue, green, brown, or pink, at the end of the day all, with no exception are going to share the same destiny!

Vs wrote:

Slavery too has different ranks

So, Vs, can we say that the slavery ranks in ME are as follow (according to UNISCO convention of slavery):

American = Slave with 5*
British = Slave with 4*
Canadian/Australian = Slave with 3*
Arab (with Us/Brtish passport) = Slave with 2*
Indian, Pakistani, Philipino (with US/british pasport) = Slave with 1*
Others = Slaves wihout * (not classified yet under UNISCO convention of slavery!!) Laughing

veiledsentiments

Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:23 am Post subject:

007... how you break down the ranks depends on which country... and is really irrelevant in the end. VS

ootii

Joined: 27 Oct 2005
Posts: 124
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:01 am Post subject:

veiledsentiments wrote:

007... how you break down the ranks depends on which country... and is really irrelevant in the end.

VS

And in the end, it boils down to this: all of us here are free to go anytime and never look back. There probably isn't anyone on these boards who hasn't left one, two, even three countries or more without much of a second thought, for whom those places became quickly receeding memories - hopefully plesant ones.

Saudis, however, don't have the luxury of detachment, and our constant complaining can really depress them, besides being just downright rude. A couple of months ago, after taking attendence in one of my classes I was struck by the number of students who had simply vanished. We'd started with more than forty students yet, almost two months before the final exams, only slightly more then twenty were left. "What is happening?", I asked.

One of them said that no one had actually chosen to be in that college. That they were simply assigned to it on the basis of their secondary school results, and most wanted to transfer to other colleges or to other institutions entirely - and about half of them did either that or left. I said, "So no one ever asked any of you what you wanted to do? They just send you here?"

One of the looked at me, slightly annoyed, and said, "You know, this is Saudi Arabia".

So, like anywhere, there's a lot wrong, and like any other third-world place, the wrong things will probably overwhelm them. But they're the ones who have to fix them. If you think otherwise, go to Iraq and fix that.

Cleopatra

Joined: 28 Jun 2003
Posts: 3657
Location: Tuamago Archipelago

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 5:13 am Post subject:

Quote:

Do you call this pretty good health care system!!!??

You clearly didn't read my earlier post, where I said that my comments were based on my own limited experience of the Saudi health care system, which thus far have been positive. I also wrote that I have no doubt that others can offer anecdotes countering my assessment, but that my post was based on what I have experienced, not on what other internet posters have.

Quote:

It does not matter if your eyes are blue, green, brown, or pink, at the end of the day all, with no exception are going to share the same destiny!

Which rather begs the question as to why it was you who brought up the subject of eye colour as a rank of 'slavery' in the first place!

Quote:

And in the end, it boils down to this: all of us here are free to go anytime and never look back.

This is true - and it's something the Saudis are very much aware of. Any Saudi over the age of 5 has probably seen several expats come and go from their lives, and all of our Saudi colleagues no doubt have considerable experience of working with arrogant expats who breeze in from Melbourne or Minnesota, only to start endlessly complaining about the bizarre ways of the locals and trying to change things to suit 'their way'. And then, hey presto, within a year or two they're gone, without a second thought as you say, leaving the Saudis being left behind to get on with their lives.

veiledsentiments

Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:29 pm Post subject:

ootii wrote:

One of them said that no one had actually chosen to be in that college. That they were simply assigned to it on the basis of their secondary school results, and most wanted to transfer to other colleges or to other institutions entirely - and about half of them did either that or left. I said, "So no one ever asked any of you what you wanted to do? They just send you here?"

So, it is all around the Gulf. I was dismayed at the way students were assigned to majors completely based on the school leaving exams scores with no input based on student interests or aptitudes. There is no thought given to what type of positions they would fill at the end of their training. If your grade was very high... off to the College of Medicine whether you wanted to be a doctor or not. My favorite was when Oman assigned a group of females to Islamic Jurisprudence and after they had completed 3 years and were in their final year someone pointed out that there were no female judges and thus they couldn't be given their degrees. You can imagine the hysteria when these girls were informed that they had to switch to another department and start over... and the department they were assigned to was... agriculture.

The Education Department gets assigned the bottom of the heap (wonder why teachers are not respected?). They will let anyone move down to that department, but no one 'assigned' to education is allowed to move up the ladder... say to science or engineering.

Then there were the hundreds of students assigned to study Economics. I would ask them what they planned to do when they graduated. I would get a blank stare. I would ask how many 'economists' does their country hire every year. Another blank stare.

What a system... the poor students... to choose their major, they pretty much have to go to private institutions.

VS

007

Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 2684
Location: UK/Veteran of the Magic Kingdom

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:40 pm Post subject:

Cleopatra wrote:

...Which rather begs the question as to why it was you who brought up the subject of eye colour as a rank of 'slavery' in the first place!

My proposed 'slavery' ranks is not based mainly on eye color, it is based on Nationality, so a black American who's eyes are not blue or green is still ranked 5* according to the proposed ranking.
But, still eye color in some countries is used as measure for 'racism' or in the sense of superiority and inferiority.
I invite you to read the following article about exploring racism on the basis of eyes color:
"In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Elliot developed a simple exercise that explored the nature of racism and prejudice.
Elliott's method for exploring racism in the context of an all-white classroom consisted of dividing her students into two groups on the basis of eye color, blue or brown (those with other eye colors were assigned to the group that most closely matched their own ........."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

Cleopatra

Joined: 28 Jun 2003
Posts: 3657
Location: Tuamago Archipelago

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:28 am Post subject:

Good lord, Abba, you don't give up, do you?

ootii

Joined: 27 Oct 2005
Posts: 124
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:43 am Post subject:

007 wrote:

My proposed 'slavery' ranks is not based mainly on eye color, it is based on Nationality, so a black American who's eyes are not blue or green is still ranked 5* according to the proposed ranking.

I know that I'm one of those who said it, but "slavery" is a little hyperbolic here. Among themselves Saudis have a particular pecking order that is established by their tribal and clan affiliations. This is one of the things that makes Saudi politics so difficult for outsiders to understand. There are actually two political systems: there is the traditional tribal system where what you can do depends mostly on what privledges and accommodations you can negotiate with a complex network of parties represening tribal and clan interests. On top of this there are the trappings of a modern state, which is primarily a thin veneer for the Aal Saud, the most powerful of the clans.

The Aal Saud are themselves splintered into a variety of sub-groups, or /fakhad/ in the geneological parlance of the Bedouin, so the Saudi state takes on the character of a variety of petty feifdoms each controlled by a different party - in this way, the dispersal of power here is not that different that of the Emirates: this party controls a powerful ministry, this one another, this party controls the army, another controls the national guard, another the police. There is a reason why Saudi Arabia has two armies.

Foreigners, the descendants of freed slaves, a considerable number of Hijazis, Shias... just about anyone who is not Bedu, falls outside this system, but they are still identified by their membership in a larger community.

As far as non-Saudis are concerned, their "tribe" is their nation and deserve the respect that each nation can command. This is why Americans are seen to be at the tip top of the heap. They are members of the premier kick-ass tribe. Brits are seen as the dogs of the Americans and respected as you respect a powerful man's bad dog.

Muslim expats often refer to this as "racism" since it really does look like that, but unlike the "racism" we might be used to in the West, it isn't to do with genetics so much as it is with power and the ability to use it.

ootii

Joined: 27 Oct 2005
Posts: 124
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:56 am Post subject:

veiledsentiments wrote:

Yes. This "system" is perplexing. There may be some logic to it though. In our college, about half of the students transfer out to some other college some time in the first year. Since they are studing mostly "general subjects" they can transfer their credits, usually not all of them, to their new college.

The colleges that they can transfer into are determined mostly by their GPAs in the first year, not by the college that they are in. So after the initial sorting and allocations, they are given something of a choice that does, indeed, depend on academic performance.

So, students finding themselves in X college can transfer out to medicine, pharmacy, nursing, engineering, computer science, administrtive science, or just about anywhere they like, provided that they meet the criteria for admission. Some colleges also require students to take an admission exam.

This does cause chaos in the first year, particularly for those teaching "general subjects" like English, Arabic, and Religious Education. We are also under constant pressure to mark students up so that they can transfer out - and this is not an unreasonable request.

I guess that they all do go somewhere and we could alleviate some of the problems by ensuring that credits from our English courses in all colleges are "transferrable". It would make no difference to my college since many more leave than arrive, but it would help in medicine and engineering.

The remaining question is, "Why aren't students given the opportunity to choose before the begin their university careers?" I suppose this has something to do with students ability to make independent decisions as the age of 18 or 19, and their parents' often unreasonable expectations.

So, there's a lot here that we can't very easily understand. It's useful to bear in mind that there are, in fact, reasons for just about everything, and while those reasons do often seem bizzare to us, they may not to others, and the behavior of Westerners is often perplexing to our hosts as well.

007

Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 2684
Location: UK/Veteran of the Magic Kingdom

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:52 pm Post subject:

Cleopatra wrote:

..Good lord, Abba, you don't give up, do you?

Which lord? Mine or Yours? Laughing

ootii wrote:

The Aal Saud are themselves splintered into a variety of sub-groups, or /fakhad/ in the geneological parlance of the Bedouin, so the Saudi state takes on the character of a variety of petty feifdoms each controlled by a different party - in this way, the dispersal of power here is not that different that of the Emirates: this party controls a powerful ministry, this one another, this party controls the army, another controls the national guard, another the police. There is a reason why Saudi Arabia has two armies.

At the end is the Al-Saud family who rules, and most importantly are the sons and grand-sons of King Abdulal-Aziz who are controlling everything. Saudi Arabia is called after the name of the powerful tribe of Al-Saud.
The brother of the king, Prince Sultan is the Minister of Defence & Aviation in addition to his position as crown prince, his brother Prince Nayef is the Minister of Interior, other brother Prince Salman is the Governor of Riyadh, etc, etc. And the sons of each powerful prince is also occupying important high position in the government. The other tribes who are outside the Al-Saud main tribe are secondary and are controlled.
"The sharing of family wealth has been a critical component in maintaining the semblance of a united front within the royal family. An essential part of family wealth is the Kingdom in its entirety, which the Al Saud view as a totally owned family asset." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud

Quote:

This is why Americans are seen to be at the tip top of the heap.

Seen by the mentally weak and the ones (rulers) who are afraid to loose their 'kingdom' chairs.

Quote:

Brits are seen as the dogs of the Americans and respected as you respect a powerful man's bad dog.

I wonder if Mr Stephen Jones, Dmb, and Scot accept the above definition of the Brits. Laughing

I know that Tony Blair was once described as GEORGE BUSH'S WATCH DOG. But not all Brits. Let the Brits speak-up and stand-up!

Last edited by 007 on Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:13 pm; edited 1 time in total

007

Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 2684
Location: UK/Veteran of the Magic Kingdom

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:11 pm Post subject:

ootii wrote:

..The colleges that they can transfer into are determined mostly by their GPAs in the first year, not by the college that they are in. So after the initial sorting and allocations, they are given something of a choice that does, indeed, depend on academic performance.

In addition to the required mark of at least 80, some of the engineering colleges in SA require students to take admission test in Maths, Physics, and English, for some specialities like Computer engineering, Software Engineering, and Electronics..

Quote:

We are also under constant pressure to mark students up so that they can transfer out - and this is not an unreasonable request.

It seems in your college the teacher is not free in his teaching and marking!! This is one of the causes of the mis-management and lack of quality control in education in SA.

Quote:

The remaining question is, "Why aren't students given the opportunity to choose before the begin their university careers?
I suppose this has something to do with students ability to make independent decisions as the age of 18 or 19, and their parents' often unreasonable expectations."

According to the tribe traditions, the poor students are brought-up no to take decision or to choose in most of their daily or future life, and to respect the decision of the father and older brother. Take, for example, the topic of marriage, the young Saudi man cannot marry as he wishes, for example, from a woman which is outside his tribe or at least from a tribe which is considered to be low in ranking.

Cleopatra

Joined: 28 Jun 2003
Posts: 3657
Location: Tuamago Archipelago

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:26 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Saudi Arabia is called after the name of the powerful tribe of Al-Saud.

Gosh thanks, abba, I'd never have figured that one out for myself...

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