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Female Teachers in KSA?
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ootii

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

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:07 pm Post subject:

007 wrote:

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.

Sorry. I was not explicit enough. The pressure is from students, not from the administration. Teachers are rarely challenged about marking, and there is almost no administrative overseight. Over the past decade or so, the only time that exam marks have been challenged in our college was when a complaint was received from the women's college. It turned out to be the result of their internal office politics and machinations to have a colleague, unpopular for some unknown reason, dismissed. We reviewed the papers and sent them back. No case.

ootii

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

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:18 pm Post subject:

007 wrote:

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.

Parental interference in the lives of children is not something that is confined to Arab cultures alone. Indeed, this generates quite a lot of friction even in superior Western societies. Still, it is generally true that children are not trained to be independent and responsible people - generally true for Muslim cultures around the world.

I think that this parental interference is one of the reasons for the Ministry of Education's decision to upstage parental directives by assigning students to faculties simply on the basis of their secondary school marks. They possibly could have done like the Egyptians and simply closed applications to certain colleages to students whose marks fall below a certain benchmark - but then, we have the problem of vitamin W to deal with, and while special favors are known to be extended in Egypt, this is traditionally in recompense for a cash incentive and cash is not so common there.

And it is not true that Saudi men cannot marry outside their tribe. They do require government permission to marry foreigners, however. In most families, brides are chosen by the women. What possibillities you have to refuse this or that suggestion must depend on your own family above anything else. It's very difficult to generalize about this.

ootii

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

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject:

Cleopatra wrote:

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...

Before it was called "Saudi Arabia", this country was known as the Sultanate of Nejd and its Dependencies. The change of name was suggested by Fuad Hamza, an Egyptian advisor to King Abdul Aziz and Saudi Arabia's first foreign minister (although Saudis won't admit this). Fuad Hamza was in fact young Faisal's minder while the latter was Viceroy of the Hijaz, and "foreign minister" at the age of 14 or so.

Fuad thought that Wahhabiland needed some new identity if the project of unifying the Bedouin tribes and building them into a modern nation was to succeed. This, and nothing else, is what saved this country from dismemberment in the early 20th century.

The Brits did manage to chop off bits around the periphery - Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States (later the Emirates). This was before oil. Their interest was to control the straights of Homruz and Gulf sea lanes to the Shaat al-Arab - it was their alternate overland route to India and keeping it open was a stragetic imperative lest they loose control of Egypt and the Suez Canal - as they eventually did.

It was British perfidity and little else that pushed the Saudis into the American camp. The British were given an early concession to explore for oil in the Eastern Province. They poked around for several years and found nothing. It was the Americans who hit pay dirt. I think that they probably knew what they were doing. The $30,000 it cost them was badly needed to fund a war with Yemen.

Cleopatra

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

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:07 am Post subject:

Quote:

The Brits did manage to chop off bits around the periphery - Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States (later the Emirates). This was before oil.

I'm certain that, had the "Great Powers" known of the huge strategic importance of the Oil Gulf, they would never have permitted the existance of one single state as large as Saudi Arabia. Not that the Saudis have ever remotely threatened "Western" hegemony in the Arab world, but how were the Brits and Americans to know that their clients would be quite so obedient?

ootii

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

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:31 am Post subject:

Cleopatra wrote:

Well, there are two reasons for the almost uninterrupted independence of the Bedouin living within the great deserts. If you fly over Saudi Arabia you will be struck by its emptyness. It looks like the surface of the moon. That's one reason. No one thought there was anything here, and virtually no one came here until the late 19th century. The other reason is political and lies in the importance of the Holy Cities to Muslims all over the world. The British probably would have taken the Hijaz except for this. At the time of their highest ascendency in the world, they directly governed almost 90 percent of the world's Muslims. Their greatest fear was that the call for jihad against them would be raised, and this was the one thing that really had the potential to destroy them. So, they kept studiously away from the Hijaz. This is also the reason why they backed both the Sahrifs and the Wahhabis in the Hijaz War which ended with the Saudi conquest of the Hijaz.

Already in the early 1930s people knew that significant oil reserves would probably be found here, but Europe had other concerns at this time, concerns that did not leave them the resources for yet another colonial rampage, and America was still sitting around whittling and playing banjos - activities they probably should not have abandonned quite so hastily.

Cleopatra

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

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:47 am Post subject:

Quote:

So, they kept studiously away from the Hijaz.

Well, yes and no.

They never ruled the area directly, but the Sharifs of the Hijaz, the Hashemis, were (and are) loyal clients of Britain. Similarly, the US has rarely seen the need to directly rule any part of the ME - empires from at least the time of the Romans have always considered it more cost-effective to install and maintain local puppets instead.

ootii

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

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:13 am Post subject:

Cleopatra wrote:

Indeed. They did rule the Hijaz by proxy, and the Hashemites were that proxy. Their loyalty to the Hashemites, however, did not extend to supporting them against Nejd, and despite repeated entreaties from both the ruling family and the good citizens of Jeddah, they refused to intervene in the war since they could not countenance being seen as the conquerers of Makkah - this would, they were convinced, be the beginning of their downfall. That is the point I was making.

When Jeddah fell it was the British resident who surrendered the sword of the Sharif to Abdul Aziz b. Saud - Sherif Hussein having already fled to Aqaba with the Hijaz treasury in tow.

The unemployed royals were installed in Jordan (Abdullah b. Hussein), Iraq (Faisal b. Husein), and briefly Syria (Faisal b. Hussein, also, before reassignment to Iraq). Ali b. Hussein, the eldest brother, had been abandonned in Jeddah by his father, who left him as his (pennyless) successor. I don't know what became of him. The Iraqi branch was overthrown by the Baathists in the 1950s. The "Jordanians" are all now that remains, and they're half English.

Stephen Jones

Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 8:17 am Post subject:

The reason the Americans and not the British undertook oil exploration was a conscious decision by Abdul-Aziz, who did not want to become a puppet ruler like the King of Iraq.

Cleopatra

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

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:03 am Post subject:

Quote:

Abdul-Aziz, who did not want to become a puppet ruler like the King of Iraq.

The irony of it...

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