Encyclopaedia
An encyclopaedia is a book or a set of books (volumes) that provide information and data, in all or some branches of knowledge and in classified and accessible alphabetical order. There is a difference between an encyclopaedia and a dictionary. An encyclopaedia is not confined to presenting a definition or translation of terms. It explains all that has to do with the term, especially background, modern definitions and contemporary uses and also any relations with other subjects.
The term: encyclopaedia or encyclopedia has been derived from two Greek words meaning absorption of general education. Encyclopaedias have appeared before approximately two thousand years. Modern encycolopaedias depended on dictionaries in the 17thcentury and some of them are published in one or more volumes, as in the case of Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was first issued in Edinburgh in 1768 – 1771 Two American companies: Sears and Reebok bought it and its seat became Chicago. Then it was sold again to the Chicago University in 1941. Four thousand scientists and thinkers from one hundred states contributed in it. Nowadays it is issued in 30 volumes.
The idea of Encyclopaedias is based on unity of human knowledge and the importance to keep unity of the knowledge heritage, so as not to be dispersed among different specialisations of several sciences. There is no separation between human knowledges because they are linked with interrelated channels and circles. The scientist, whose knowledge is confined to his specialised field, ends with shallow and limited thinking. We all know that most created philosophers and thinkers where interested in other branches of knowledge far away from their own. Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurophysiologist, had an obsession with ancient Egypt. He told a friend that he read more archeology than psychology. Francis Bacon an English philosopher was also a statesman, a scientist, a lawyer, a jurist and an author. It is important to maintain unity and comprehensiveness of human knowledges because they are interrelated. From here comes the idea of general and specialised encyclopaedias to help researchers to have easy access to information.
Some modern encyclopaedias are electronic and they are often available free of charge on the Internet. A non-profit making corporation issued the electronic encyclopaedia Wikipedia in 2001. It is edited by volunteered readers and appears in one hundred different languages, free of charge.
The aim of encyclopaedias is to collect all kinds of knowledge around the world and put them down in a general classified system that facilitates access to them when needed and to make them available for all human beings, of this generation or the coming generations, as encyclopaedias are not made only for the use of researchers and thinkers. Encyclopaedias help to prevent disappearance of works and civilisations of previous centuries, as happened with the old Greek civilisation, which except for the fact that the Arabs were smart enough to translate all about it in time into Arabic, the West would have been unable to make its renaissance.
At the same time, our sons can easily be educated and cultured and be introduced to virtues and feel happy. Before we die, we should offer a service to the human race in the future. This is the philosophy of encyclopaedias since they first appeared up till now.
The first endeavour to collect and classify all branches of knowledge in a comprehensive way was done by Aristotle in his works. Alexandria scientists contributed in issuing a work that had an encyclopaedic character in which they collected sets of books and abstracts. Asian old encyclopaedias appeared, in the shape of anthologies of books, without any classification, which made it difficult to deal with them when needed. However, they preserved the contents of these books from being lost.
Encyclopaedias are cultural, civilised, scientific, technical and commercial, as well. They have numerous functions: as they are "a store of facts" and a "systematic survey of all branches of knowledge", as experts said. Publishing encyclopaedias cost much money in preparing the material, classifying and printing before distributing the final product. They should realise profits for the publishers. However, in the 20th Century information technology changed all these concepts. Although it is now possible to present some encyclopaedias on the Internet free of charge as we have already mentioned, still printed encyclopaedias are published and sold and they enrich private and public libraries.
Encyclopaedias used varied methods in publication. In 1620, for instance, the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) suggested "organisation of knowledges on scientific basis". Alphabetical order only appeared in the 12th century. The first specialised encyclopaedia in English was: John Harris's Lexicon Technicum, which was first published in 1704. The editor John Harris was a Fellow of the Royal Society and he took the advice of some scientists such as Isaac Newton and introduced the system of expert advisers to assist him in preparing his encyclopaedia.
It is said that the first encyclopaedia in the world was the one which the author, philosopher and natural scientist: Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, published in 77-79 AD by the name: Naturalis Historia. It is the biggest book that was left by the Roman Empire so far. It covered ancient knowledges that belonged to the best thinkers and scientists at the time. It is considered an example for all other encyclopaedias to imitate, due to the great number that were tackled and because it was based on original scientific references and the subjects were classified. It appeared in 37 volumes.
The first encyclopaedia that was published in America was Encyclopaedia Americana in 1829 - 1833. It was edited by an émigré of German origin: Francis Lieber and was based on a German encyclopaedia and a big number of American thinkers contributed in it.
The Islamic Arab Culture has known the idea of encyclopaedias, with the tendency that the book should contain more than one science or art. The first beginnings were in the 3rd century of Higrae, when a book entitled "al-Haywan" (The Animals) by al-Jahiz appeared and another book: "al-Maarif" (Knowledges) by Ibn-Qutayba and a book: "al-Akhbar al Towal" (Long News) by Abu Hanifa al Dinuri.
The 8th century of Higrae (Islamic Calendar) is clearer in the idea of encyclopaedias and some people attributed that to the atrocious offensive against the Islamic world in the 7th century of Higrae and the fall of Baghdad in the hands of Tatars who destroyed its library. The Arab scientists were motivated to issue encyclopaedias, such as "Nihayat El Arab" by Nouairi, which was printed in 33 volumes and included several arts and knowledges. Then there was the book: "Masalk Al Ibsar", by Ibn Fadhal Allah Al-Emary and "Sobh al-a'sha", a fourteen volume Arabic encyclopaedia by Qalqashandi, a medieval Egyptian writer and mathematician and "Mabahig al-Fikr wa ManahigAl 'ibar" by al-Woutwat.
It is noticed also that the language encyclopaedias which appeared at that time was nearer to the idea of encyclopaedias. The encyclopaedia did not confine itself to introducing the linguistic meaning of a term and its derivatives, but it also spoke of literature, history, heritage, droll stories, to introduce its scientific material. This is noticed in "Lissan al-Arab" by Ibn Manzour and "Taj al-Arous" by al-Zubaidi.
As for the early beginnings of issuing Arab encyclopaedias, it was, as Dr. Mohamed Abdel Latif said, to the end of the 10th century by Boutros al-Boustani who published an encyclopaedia in Beirut in 1876 and continued publishing it up to 1900. Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt sponsored it.
The second endeavor was made by Mohamed Farid Wagdi in "Encyclopaedia of the 20th century", which was a complete encyclopaedia that was issued in 20 volumes by an individual effort. However, its difficulty was that it was classified according to the derivative word in the language, which made it inaccessible.
The Arabic translation of the Islamic Encyclopaedia started to be issued in 1933. The editors were Professor Dr. Abdel Hamid Younis, Ahmed El-Shintawi and Ibrahim Zaki Khourshid. Work in it continued up to 1965. A translation of the second edition of the "Islamic Encyclopaedia" by the Orientalists was issued and it was translated up to a certain letter and stopped.
Meanwhile an "Arab Easy Encyclopaedia" was published in 1958 in collaboration with the Franklin Foundation. It was abridged and mostly translated. The supervisor was the historian Mohamed Shafik Ghorbal. Then the "Islamic Dictionary" was issued in five volumes by Ahmed Atiyatallah.
A number of Arab Encyclopaedias followed like the "Political Encyclopaedia", the "Military Encyclopaedia", "Encyclopaedia of Orientalists", "Encyclopaedia of Egypt's History and Antiquities" and others. The main obstacle before the spread of encyclopaedias in the Arab World has been that it is like heavy industry in the world of publication. It needs huge finance and its marketing is slow, due to high price and difficulty for the educated people to obtain, which constitutes an obstacle for private publishing houses
Educational Evaluation
Education, in the Arab world, has become one of the public opinion issues, which preoccupies all Arab states and attracts attention of all strata of Arab societies. This issue is no more connected with a set of educationists or specialised educational experts, or a group of high official in the Ministries of Education or Higher Education. There is a general concern of the deteriorating level of education, as never happened before. Inferior level of regular learning has led to the spread of private lessons which constitute a burden on income-limited families. Curricula are no more compatible with the necessities of our modern life. Huge numbers of pupils and students are allowed to join schools and universities, without available facilities, shortage in funds for the educational process or scientific research. Salaries and wages devour the great part of the educational budgets. These problems accumulated and became very complicated and are not matching any more the Arab World's ambitions to occupy an advanced position among civilised states in the world. Even when an increasing numbers of foreign schools and universities have been established, some of these institutions have their own problems, because their curricula do not respond to national requirements. They insist to teach all subjects in foreign languages only, as a matter of snobbishness and they neglect the Arab language, inter alia.
The Educational policy refers to collecting laws, rules and regulations that govern the process of the educational systems. Education takes many shapes for various purposes, through several institutions, from kindergartens to university education. Therefore the educational policy can directly affect students of all ages.
Analysis of educational policy means a scientific study of this policy. It seeks to answer questions concerning education and (societal and personal) objectives that it seeks to realise. Research studies that support educational policy take place in a number of institutions and use multidisciplinary systems. Important researches in this connection are interested in branches of knowledge in psychology, economics, sociology and human development.
Here comes the role of educational evaluation and how to accomplish it in the best way. Every thinker, researcher and expert can contribute in that. The process should not be confined to high officials of the Ministry of Education or Higher Education who have played great roles. However, some of them have been frozen and stuck to certain concepts and they contrived to continue in their work after retirement, using different names such as advisers. They, thus impair the growth and development of the educational process.
Educational evaluation is an assessment and revision process of all practical aspects of education, to detect the realistic benefits that have been realised, in such positive way, far away from courtesy and exaggerations. The aim of the evaluation is to identify problems and find suitable solutions. Therefore developed states create permanent committees for that purpose. Their mission is to evaluate, then suggest solutions and after that supervise the implementation of reform in any aspect that needs one. Developing states, on the other hand, form ad hoc (not permanent) committees and, from time to time, they suggest partial and incomplete suggestions, without bothering to reach the core of the problems.
Committees that are concerned with the evaluation standards are divided into sub-committees that evaluate the faculty (professors), students, or programmes. Evaluation committees of professors should take into account legal, moral considerations and interests of those who are evaluated and beneficiaries of educational services.
There are standards of "benefit evaluation" which guides educational evaluation to collect basic required data in time and use them immediately. Quality standards should use feasible and practicable evaluation systems that are able to use optimal time and resources. There are a "precision standard" that requires that obtained data are technically precise and are logically inter-connected. There are standards to "evaluate programmes" and ensure that such programmes serve users of information. Evaluation as a whole should be realistic, impartial, far sighted and cost-effective.
As for standards of "student evaluation", it should be done in a legal and moral way and students' rights should be maintained. It should be a practical and appropriate evaluation from the cultural, social and political points of view. Real costs and sustainability should be considered. Data and information should be precise, correct and credible in regards to teaching students and their performance.
There are two purposes in evaluating education: and they are in contrast with each other at a certain stage. Educational institutions usually require evaluation of information to identify the efficacy of education, for the government or founders and owners of private schools and university and to prove a sensible quality of performance to get more funds from the state's budget or to promote marketing in case of private institutions. However, most of these private institutions concentrated on the commercial and lucrative aspects as in the case of any investment project. There are only few of them that are affiliated with foreign universities or states that are keen to keep up reputation of their private education.
Educational evaluation is also a specialised professional activity which educationalists should perform if they want to revise and support the educational process which they try to apply. That requires open-mindedness and well-informed operations of developments that took place in education processes in the world and not just depend on previous experiences that are outdated. It is incredible that one Arab distinguished scientist who have migrated for twenty years and when he visited his country of origin he discovered that the faculty from which he was graduated still teach the same curricula and theories. Most of them have been proved invalid. There was negligence to teach new theories. It is incredible also to believe that reform of education needs many years and when a former Prime Minister of a South Asian country heard that, he called it sheer backwardness, because his country managed to reform education in two years.
It was recently discovered that text books for schools and universities are dominated by a group of beneficiaries who monopolise authoring and revising these books for years and would not allow any outsiders to contribute with new ideas or knowledge. The solution is not only to replace such group, but also to put down sound bases to prevent repetition of this malpractice and monopoly of the educational process for money.
There should be awareness of the necessity to devise a mechanism to permanently develop education as developed states do. In order to reform educational evaluation, it is an incessant and permanent process. Members of these committees should be carefully selected and not appointed ex officio and only for a limited period of time to guarantee that there are always new blood and creative visions.
European Union (EU)
It is an economic and political union that was established in 1993, after the member states of the European Community ratified the Maastricht Treaty. Since then membership expanded and is now 27 member states, after allowing a number of Eastern and Middle European states to join. EU expanded the scope of European Economic Community's activities, especially in foreign and security policies. Another step was taken towards realising the European Union in 1998, when a European Central Bank was established. In 2003 eleven states used one currency: the Euro.
EU membership is available for any European democratic state. European presidency is rotated between members every six months. Summit conferences are convened in June and December in a hosting state. The seat of the European Community is in Brussels (Belgium) and the European Community has many institutions including the European Union with 518 members from member states. It convenes every month for one week in Strasbourg (France). Elections are held every five years and every EU citizen is entitled to vote and to stand as a candidate, wherever they live in the EU. The latest elections were in June 2009. Parliament thus expresses the democratic will of the Union's citizens (more than 490 million people) and represents their interests in discussions with the other EU institutions. The present parliament has 736 members from all 27 EU countries.
The EU's decision-making process involves three main institutions:
§ The European Parliament (EP), which represents the EU’s citizens and is directly elected by them;
§ The Council of the European Union, which represents all individual member states;
§ The European Commission, which seeks to uphold the interests of the Union as a whole.
The EU aims at establishing a free trade zone removing all obstacles to promote economic wealth. The EU member states are already the biggest producers in the world. Euro has managed to maintain its competitive value with the US dollar for a long time, up to the time when the Greek financial crisis took place. The EU member states decided to alleviate its effects in order to maintain EU economic reputation, as we shall see later.
The EU Commission (which was the European Economic Community) is like the Executive Power, or the Public Service of the Government, as it makes and executes policies, but not legislations. The European Commission suggests and the European Council orders. The European Parliament contributes also in decision making. For instance preparing and implementing the budget depends on a proposal from the Commission on which the Council agrees, but the Parliament can reject, as it did occasionally.
In the first place, 20 members of the Commission are appointed by governments of the member states. Each state tries to appoint one of its citizens in a high level post in the Union. However, there is an informal quota system, so that every state of the five big ones has two commissioners and every other state has one commissioner. Nevertheless, it is probable that this system may change after accepting more members from Eastern Europe.
The President of the European Commission is elected for two years and he can interfere in appointing high posts of the 24 directors general of Departments, which are similar to Ministries. When commissioners are appointed they have to serve the interests of the EU as a whole and not that of their states.
Any government of the member states can submit proposals to the European Commission. Usually other governments are interested in such proposals. They suspect them, because any proposal can be an enforceable law on all member states, when it is endorsed and it will cancel any local law that is contradictory to it. Therefore any proposal can be discussed in a wide scale by a committee of permanent representatives in Brussels, the European Parliament, the European interest groups and big corporations which may be affected by such proposal. Therefore proposals take much time before they are submitted to the Council and they may not be endorsed. With time the Commission becomes powerful, supported by the Parliament, in making legislations that are enforceable on all member states, even if they contradict local laws.
One of the challenges that faced the EU, after a boom that witnessed a raise in the value of Euro, is the financial crisis in Greece. The Greek government was unable to tackle it and there was concern that it may affect other European states (such as Hungary, Spain and Italy). Therefore the EU was interested to help Greece to overcome the crisis that had to do with its debts, as soon as possible.
The EU leaders welcomed that the European states that are members of the unified Euro zone agreed to offer bilateral loans and that the International Monetary Fund offers financial and technical assistances to help Greece get out of its crisis.