Lack of Diversity in School Curriculums
We thought it was just us who had this issue on our mind but the interviews were interesting and all agreed on the lack of diversity in the curriculum.
Research team member
Our team felt that Kuwait’s school curriculums lack diversity, and that this affects whether students from different backgrounds and communities feel included or not. We decided to dive deeper into where this lack of diversity comes from by conducting in-depth interviews with academics and school administrators from across different universities in Kuwait. The data from the interviews tells us that Kuwait's school curriculums lack diversity for several reasons. One reason is that those in power have historically shaped the history books, leaving out the stories of marginalized groups who couldn't record their own experiences, often because they couldn't read and write. There are also sensitive issues in Kuwait's history, like the history of slaves or the Bidoon people, that people are hesitant to discuss openly. In the past, Western accounts of history were relied upon, which mainly focused on the interests of rulers and colonizers, ignoring minority experiences.
But things are changing. Professors and researchers in Kuwait and around the world are now paying attention to topics that were previously ignored. This is a positive step towards diversifying curriculums and representing minorities better in Kuwait's education system.
At the beginning of data collection [our understanding of the bidoon subject] was shallow and it is not as big of an issue, like you can discuss it but with certain limitations. Then when we tried to analyze we thought there is more to dig deeper and we got that in our second interview.
Research team member
We began our research focusing on key themes and believed these were the most important questions to ask our peers.
Curriculum review:
• How often is the curriculum updated?
• Is the curriculum revision process top-down or bottom-up?
• What is the difficulty level of the process of reviewing the curriculums? (easy/hard?)
Scale of censorship:
• What is the scale of limitations about what can be said and what can't in terms of censorship?
• Is the censorship coming from religion/society/state?
• Which demographics' narratives are being censored?
• Who's benefiting from the censorship?
Curriculum design:
• How can different academic backgrounds and experiences affect/influence the writing of the curriculums?
• Are departments/professors exposed to local history/literature/figures?
• How much of the curriculum is imported and how much of it is locally produced?
• Do departments get a say in how international or how Western their content is?
• If history is westernized, why don't the professors base the curriculum on interviews with individuals from different minorities living in Kuwait to be more inclusive?
Curriculum developers:
• Who is forming the curriculum?
• What are the levels of authority involved in the process of curriculum development? Who is at the highest level?
• What are the credentials and required no. of years' experience for curriculum designers?
• How does society influence the writing of curriculums?
• Who does the Ministry of Education consult in the development process?
And as any research project goes, we were full of assumptions that would later be clarified by some very succinct realizations.
Assumptions
• The curriculum is dominated by a singular classist male-centered narrative that does not highlight the diversity of Kuwait’s society throughout its history.
• The curriculum is dominated by Western and orientalist narratives and does not highlight local history enough.
Realizations
• There is public resistance to diverse curriculum and new ideas. Evidence of this was the public reaction towards the Women and Gender Studies Unit at Kuwait University, which was eventually shut down.
• Different universities have different curriculum processes; GUST, for example, has a pre-approval process, while Kuwait University’s curriculum creation is open to public pressure.
• Censorship on what can be in the curriculum and what can be said in the class exists in universities in Kuwait. Discussions in class, however, are relatively more free than the curriculums themselves.
Key insights from our research
There was a consensus in the interviews that history is written by the rulers. In Kuwait particularly the history tends to focus on the Sheikhs and merchant families, to the exclusion of other groups and social aspects of the country’s history.
There was a consensus that minorities are missing from the narrative, although more professors and researchers are focusing on once “obscured” topics, such as Christians in Kuwait or the Bidoon.
The history curriculum taught in Kuwait tends to be colonialist because often Western narratives are considered less biased when covering the region and are thus cited and referenced more, even though in reality Western writers are less knowledgeable when it comes to the region.
Often, minority groups rely on oral history to document their stories and these stories are difficult to rely on in formal curricula – indeed the respondents stated how they do not use them in their work – as they are difficult to verify, trace or reference.
How and what is being taught is very much dependent on the professor’s point of view. There is no “formal” censorship.
Some students are resistant to talking about certain aspects, such as the history of slavery or certain social groups. That would be considered sensitive, so professors tend to shy away from teaching these aspects to avoid controversy.
Our conclusion
Our team is made up of members from various backgrounds and subcultures. We've attended different schools and universities in Kuwait, which exposed us to various curriculums and their differences and similarities. Through our experiences, we've personally seen the lack of diversity in social science curricula and the absence of our own stories and our families' stories.
We believe that exposing students to the diverse narratives within Kuwait's population and the different roles played by people with similar backgrounds in Kuwait's history can empower them to become active citizens. Our goal is to present history as it is, with both its positive and negative aspects, so that students can embrace it as a part of their own story. We want to encourage students to ask questions, break free from a culture of shaming, and embrace their individuality.