Abdullah Bin Bakheet

Al-Riyadh

 

I AM not exaggerating when I say that I mastered a lot of games in elementary school that involved physical activity such as volleyball, soccer, table tennis, etc. When I got to intermediate school, I mastered many games that challenge the brain such as chess, Scrabble and Mastermind.



If I sat an examination on the most prominent intellectuals and writers of the time such as Taha Hussein or Naguib Mahfouz and the most prominent experts on Islamic and Pre-Islamic history, chances are that I would have aced the test.



I memorized countless poems from the old and modern eras. If one asked me about the most important inventors and discoverers around the world, I would have listed them. I was like a walking encyclopedia and had extensive knowledge about our heritage and the world around us.



How did I manage to learn all this when I was young? Extracurricular activities offered by elementary schools then were similar to compulsory courses. They were intensive and students were distributed into groups according to their interests.



We used to have a group for Holy Qur’an memorization, journalism, scouts, radio programs and the like. Gym classes were important too and schools, although small, offered students several options like basketball, volleyball, track and table tennis.



Schools kept their doors open in the evenings and allowed students to use facilities. For each game, we had a league and competition was fierce.



In intermediate school, we focused more on enriching our minds and souls as we drowned ourselves in poetry and Arabic books. We had poetry competitions where a student would say a line from a poem and the opposing student would recite another line that started with the same letter his opponent’s line ended with. It was a tough competition.



Each school had a library, a laboratory, an art room and rooms for various extracurricular activities.



This type of education made us broaden our horizons and improve our intellectual capabilities. The only downside was that talented students at the time did not find sponsors from the private or public sectors who could utilize their talent and take it to the next level. My generation was one of the generations the government was building for the modern Kingdom.



Everyone who studied during the same era was as smart. When I compare what I learned in elementary and intermediate schools with what my daughter is learning at her Canadian school today, I do not see a lot of difference. The only difference is in the goals of education.