General Supervisor

According to one of the reports of Children’s Department at the Arab League,
the Saudi child is one of the world’s most cared for children in terms of wellbeing
because he enjoys good levels of education and recreation as well as the
distinguished religious upbringing and social education, which in turn help in
making of normal children. Many of the studies and documents conducted by
the Arab League confirm this. Nevertheless, the Saudi child is still away from
the effective practice of knowledge society output, and is still dealing with the
cortexes of this phase that appears on the surface, without having played a an
engaging and positive role in a knowledge society.
The discussion of the challenges in the next section will highlight the reality
of Saudi society more clearly in terms of cognitive problems and difficulties,
and then we will try to link these challenges to the reality of the Saudi children.
Third Theme: Challenges
Challenges can be summarized in the following points:
1 - The most worrying with regard to some issues raised by the knowledge
society is their effects on identity and cultural specificity. The concern is justified
in the light of the attempts of economic powers to pattern the behaviors and
culture of people in all societies and subject them to a prevalent system of
values and behavior patterns. In consumer societies, as the overflow of ideas,
information, images and values coming to many of the communities the
possibility of exploding the identity crisis, has become one of the key issues
facing the human thinking at the global level. In the context of this crisis, tribal
partisanship, sectarianism and narrow nationalism will be emitted and the
desire to search for roots and protect specificity will grow. It seems that the
cultural obsession with specificity is the same obsession of both authenticity
and contemporariness, as wrongly thought by those who believe that the
protection of cultural identity lies in isolating it from the outside world and
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protecting it from the effects of universal culture. It is needless to emphasize
that the cultural identity which needs to be protected from alienation is the
culture of creativity, and not the consumption culture, the culture of change
and not the overall culture of inertia, the culture of national unity with its
human civilization prospect, and not the culture of the disintegrated parts,
each of which is considered an alternative to the nation. So, some segments
of the Saudi society fear from becoming a knowledge society because of their
fear for their identity and originality. For that reason we see them resisting
transformation and insist on adhering to the old ways, which over the years,
have become part of the identity and cultural characteristics of the nation.
2 - One of the most important challenges of the knowledge society is the
problem of separation of activities and their disintegration. For example,
we find the mismatch between the topics of education and its curriculum,
and the topics of scientific research and its output on one hand, and the
requirements of institutions of knowledge employment and the needs of
work and development on the other hand. It is very necessary to acknowledge
interaction of activities within the framework of an integrated cycle to which
education is linked with scientific research, and also linked the two with
employment of knowledge in order to achieve development. For this reason,
knowledge activities should be activated within what is known as the cycle
of knowledge or the framework of knowledge, based on five axes rotating
in the orbit of the transformation processes towards the knowledge society.
The first of these axes requires the setting of a common strategy for all
knowledge activities, while the second axis focuses on the production and
delivery of technology, and the optimal and wider use of it. The third axis is
concerned with institutions and bodies within the system of society, whether
governmental or private, and their role in activating knowledge. The fourth
axis deals with human knowledge, whether adult or child their capacity as the
mainstay of knowledge society besides the development and growth of such
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