As a follow up to CERD’s efforts in developing curricula that suit the needs of this age, and based on the cooperation with the Lebanese University, private and public institutions, civil society organizations as well as all those concerned in education in Lebanon, CERD launched a workshop today attended by more than 200 participants. This is the fourth of its kind aiming to form specialized committees. The latter will gather educational views into a unified framework which will be submitted to the MEHE Minister and then to the Council of Ministers to issue new organizational decrees. 

The workshop started with a speech by the CERD president focusing on the aim of these consecutive workshops and stressed on the importance of unifying comprehensive national efforts to redirect the path of education to the level of developing countries. The president called on all participates to be up to CERD and the nation’s expectations.

Then the representative of Union of Institutions and Private Schools Mrs. Suhair Zein presented the union’s vision for education in the future.

Finally the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the Lebanese University highlighted on the citizen skills for accountability which is a topic that has never been introduced before. The students need to know how budgets are calculated. It is not sufficient to teach the learners about democracy. Thus narrowing the important issue to democracy without accountability has a missing component.

Workshop

  Following the opening ceremony the educators were divided into 15 working groups according to the subjects. Each participant joined the group according to his/her specialization. The president intended to approach every subject through experienced practitioners, subject matter experiences, university instructors, in order to suggest topics, to be amended, or deleted.

The second session tackled the suggested topics from the previous workshops submitted by experts and civil society organizations.

The workshop as announced is not intended to present suggestions. Due to the variety of topics, the discussions will be handed over to all participants for further study, thus facilitating mapping with the aim for collective collaboration among all those concerned.

Future Curricula Projects

CERD is currently preparing a workshop for the suspended subjects. The feedback   from workshop is crucial in forming a learner whose skills match with the requirements of the new era. Another workshop is being prepared to align the curricula with special educational needs.  The third one will be for the learners who will express their interests and concerns to experts in order to compare them to the outcomes, subjects and activities. It will also indicate the degree the learners’ responses to active methods in schools at hand.

All this will necessitate amendments in content and trigger further discussions regarding the extent of development that the digital content will reach.