2008 Occasional Papers - AUK

memorization and repetition. This approach emphasizesacquired content while critical analysis incorporatingthe learner’s life experience is minimized. These dualframes of reference are mirrored in four learning modesthat Shahin (2005) identifies as diffuse or foreclosed fortraditional orientations and exploratory or achieved formodern orientations.A lesser examined aspect of this collective versus individualidentity dichotomy relates to the need to be acceptedas part of the collective group or risk isolation fromone’s fellow students and how this challenges academicintegrity. For example, students who engage in cheatingand plagiarism or bargaining over grades see these as actsof collective cooperation and helping out one another.The circumstances surrounding these acts are mitigatedbecause the perpetrator has a felt moral obligation to thecollective. The alternative, as noted, is to be isolated andoutcast from the group.Taken from this socially constructed perspective,as Kendall notes in her article on Kuwaiti students,personalized relations justify cheating and treating gradesas negotiable items - even though, this challenges westernviews of academic propriety:In intimate social formations, particularly in families,people make allowances for each other’s personalities andpredilections, adjusting their behaviors and discernmentsto the perceived requirements of the moment. Undersuch conditions, impartiality is impossible; under suchconditions, partiality is demanded. By contrast, wherepeople have few genuine moral obligations, where theirinteractions are casual or commercial, where they areignorant of the factors playing upon others, they havelittle basis for recognizing mitigating circumstances andhence for exercising discretion. Under such conditionsappeals to impersonal rules and abstract standards areindicative not so much of peoples’ ethical sophisticationand advance as they are indicative of their estrangement.(Kendall, 1991:101)3.6 Means for Problem ResolutionMost visitors to the Gulf region are likely to hear aboutor experience wasta. The term refers to mediation orintercession often to obtain services or some end throughpersonal connections. A distinction is made betweenintermediary wasta and intercessory wasta. The formerhas as its goal mediation to resolve inter-personal or intergroupdifferences. In contrast, intercessory wasta has asits aim a benefit for example, obtaining a driving license,reduction of a penalty, getting a job, etc.In the context of education, wasta can refer to a connectionfor the purpose of negotiating and inflating grades, usinginfluential outsiders and insiders to hire staff membersand instructors, admitting unqualified or under-achievingstudents, pressuring faculty members in various ways so thatsome students receive special consideration and bendingof the rules in favor of certain outcomes, among otherthings. “Intercessory wasta exemplifies the collective actionproblem” where action furthering “individual interestharms the collective interest” (Cunningham and Sarayrah,1994: 9). In this case, the education and re-tooling of anational workforce to participate in the global economyare being put at a disadvantage because wasta drives outcompetence based education and its emphasis on criticalthinking skills deriving from western liberal education.4.0 Research QuestionsThe above literature review suggests three general themesrevolving around knowledge, identity, and means ofproblem resolution. Specifically, these themes are: a) thephilosophical compatibility of western liberal arts withIslamic precepts concerning knowledge; b) the inherentbias towards individualist and critical forms of learningfound in western liberal education versus the collectivistic,rote forms of learning found in Islamic cultures;and c) depersonalized forms of problem resolutionwithin bureaucratic (organic) structures in contrast tothe personalized forms of problem resolution withintraditional non-bureaucratic (mechanistic) structures.In turn, these themes surrounding the establishment ofWestern-style education in the Arabian Gulf give rise tothe following issues:• How much curriculum adaptation or modification canbe accepted before liberal education becomes devoidof its premises and content?• To what extent is successful diffusion of Western-styleeducation in a local traditional, conservative settingpossible?• Who is adapting to whom? Is liberal educationadapting to its environment or vice versa?This paper focuses on the third issue because it partiallysubsumes the other two issues and in examining the issuessurrounding adaptation we can direct our attention topractical applications for the classroom and the educationsystem. In particular, the hypothesis addressed by this studyis: Intercessory wasta is being used to accommodate westernliberal education to traditional authority structures in Gulf.27