I begin my article with a quote from Abdul Rahman Munif’s book, “Democracy First, Democracy Always”: “Oil has a scent that would make even gods salivate.” However, I will replace the word “corruption” with “oil.”
What then if I were to address an educational issue that concerns all of Lebanese society? How do we deal with a system that is supposedly “educational and values-based,” meant to establish a refined and humane society, while in reality it is corrupt to the core? I am certain that any educational system that does not teach truth-telling, confronting injustice, and building the nation is structurally flawed and hollow in substance.
When I graduated from the American University of Beirut (on a scholarship from the Hariri Foundation) with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a teaching diploma in English, as my parents, both teachers, had advised me to do to secure a job in public secondary education, I never imagined I would become a teacher. I remember Professor Raouf Ghossaini, who supervised two core courses in active learning, telling me once after I completed a project and explained a lesson in philosophy: “Mona… you were born to be a teacher .” I didn’t pay much attention to him at the time… as I felt no creative motivation for teaching.
I found a prestigious job at the Center for Arab Unity Studies, where I was assigned the task of proofreading and editing, and I loved my profession to the point of devotion. However, urgent and difficult personal circumstances led me to leave Beirut in 1992 and return to Tyre, “the city of mischief and charming childish pranks.”
But the images that were etched in my memory, both the visible and the hidden, changed radically. It became capitalized, swelled, and its buildings rose with blatant ugliness, incompatible with its small area in terms of heritage, visual appeal, and demographics… It expanded like a ferocious beast angered by its inability to touch the sky and the soul.
At that time, the city did not offer a wide range of employment options beyond education and banking.
In 1993, I took a contract with a public girls’ high school, and two years later we took a job competition conducted by the Civil Service Commission, as required by law.
I remember clearly that from the very first lesson I taught, I felt as if a genie had been teaching philosophy for ages within me. I vowed to myself to make every lesson a stage for human interaction between me and the students.
During that period, the phenomenon of “committed” Islamism had not yet spread to the extent it later did. I was amazed by female students who, even now (some of whom have become my colleagues and friends), still possess a critical sense, a leftist dialectic, a distinctive logical argument, and a remarkable sense of patriotism.
The academic years continued, but none of them were like 1993. Gradually, generation after generation, manifestations of fanaticism and allegiance to a self-contained sectarian party became apparent. The spark of beautiful philosophical and literary discussions was extinguished, except for a few rare female students who had been raised in a patriotic, civic, and secular environment.
I will never forget the day a student’s father came in, furious because of my explanation of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, shouting: “Madam, your job is to teach girls, not to educate them!”… Instead of the administration taking my side, I found them appeasing the “distraught” father by distorting his daughter’s mind! He did not realize that I am not the one who set the curricula that “offend” modesty.
Then I began to notice that the high school theater was being used for religious activities and events, instead of artistic, national, and educational ones; that pictures of certain religious and political leaders were plastered on classroom walls, and party flags almost covered the windows. I never once heard the Lebanese national anthem resonate in the students’ ears, stirring within them a genuine sense of belonging to Lebanon.
Question marks, astonishment, and resentment accumulated in my conscience, as in the conscience of the rare few colleagues who, like me, adopt the same national, educational, and moral principles.
I also observed, day after day, that excluding the Civil Service Council from the process of contracting qualified teachers opened the door for principals to contract with “teachers” based on connections and recommendations from influential political figures. We began to hear terms like “contract paid for by the parents’ council” or “contract hires.”
Gradually, formal secondary education has lost the cultural luster it should instill in students. I asked some relatives and friends in various regions across Lebanon, and I was shocked to find that the situation was the same everywhere.
I was also surprised to discover that secondary school teachers contracted by private schools (some of which I’m justified in calling them “shops”) are mostly absent from their public high schools, while fulfilling their full teaching loads in the private sector. I discovered this by chance, and on several occasions, through my daughters and some acquaintances and neighbors! Moreover, the performance of some teachers in the public sector is weak and irresponsible, unlike their performance in private schools. Even the way they treat students in public schools is condescending, while the same teacher fears for their livelihood if a private school student or their parents are upset with them… After all, they’re just a customer!
Given this accumulated experience, a significant portion of which I witnessed firsthand, I vowed to make the public school system my cause. The people of my city, Tyre, know my courage and boldness in pointing out the truth and confronting challenges. I faced immense pressure and paid a heavy price, but I never wavered. I am not an employee who receives a salary at the beginning of the month and then abandons everything else. I am a sculptor of ideas, concepts, and problems. My mission is to awaken a sense of criticism, doubt, questioning, and curiosity in the minds of my students. Otherwise, what is my role? To simply regurgitate information, empty it, and package it in their boxes?
In the aftermath of the July 2006 war, my intellectual, political, and cultural disagreements with the high school principal arose due to her suppression of the beauty of intellectual diversity and moral tolerance towards others. It was as if she expected me to regurgitate her party’s ideas and beliefs and pour them directly into the students’ minds! For thirteen years, I had been certain that, deep down, based on my upbringing, relationships, studies, and readings, I detested educational institutions that were segregated by gender. Therefore, I submitted a request to the Directorate to transfer to another public high school in Tyre, a co-educational school that aligned with my convictions and educational philosophy.
Positive dialogue between the principal and the teaching staff may alleviate some of the problems, but it cannot eradicate them entirely, especially in a country like Lebanon, with its diverse backgrounds and affiliations: there are sects, religions, political parties, and social environments, and there are also the “educational” offices within the Ministry of Education and Higher Education that are dedicated to political parties. Nor can I ignore the crucial role that the Educational Center for Research and Development must play in updating curricula and textbooks, on which enormous sums are spent, only to have books later published by private publishing houses in the “market” as a form of questionable advertising competition. Finally, and unfortunately, the Ministry and its regulations play a minimal role.
What are the serious obstacles that some dedicated and principled administrators and professors encounter in their efforts to advance formal education in Lebanon?
1- The marginalization and politicization of the Civil Service Council’s role in conducting entrance examinations for both primary and secondary school teaching positions. The sole cause of this obstacle is political interference. Under these circumstances, competence and merit lose all value and even exist. During Lebanon’s golden age of education and culture, the Council’s examinations were conducted with transparency, scientific rigor, and objective assessment; no political leader ever dared to contact Council officials. Once the exams were graded, the Council’s gates and halls were closed, and after the results were tallied, they were posted on a board at the entrance—there was no room for favoritism or nepotism.
2- The offices of the “educational” coordinators within the ministry are, to put it bluntly, often political party offices. There, programs, contracts, teaching loads, and transfers are prepared with little regard for the general educational interest. On several occasions—particularly in the south, where the de facto authorities wield considerable influence—arbitrary transfers with partisan or personal motives have occurred between teachers and administrators. Furthermore, some coordinators instruct certain principals to assign a teacher they have fallen out of favor with a malicious teaching program; this is where the real injustice lies, without the teacher having any connections to protect them.
3- The arbitrary application of the legal quota for classes according to political influence. The teacher who is “unconnected” is subjected to the quota literally, while his colleague who is “connected” evades classes without accountability; the intervening political entity knows best.
4- Political interference in educational inspection , specifically its administrative aspect. Some influential figures created an illegal office to nominally replace educational inspection: the “Guidance and Counseling Office.” This office was formed from tenured secondary school teachers whose teaching loads had been reduced, supposedly to “oversee” the educational process and improve teacher performance—a stark contrast between what is advertised and what actually happens. There is no real guidance or constructive counseling. In fact, many of these “counselor” positions are exploited to attract students to their private schools, using their public teaching hours to benefit the private sector.
5- The absence of practical application of information : If the scientific definition of education is to bring about a change in the learner’s behavior and performance, then where is the application of information in laboratories? Knowing that most public secondary schools are better equipped than some private schools, and there is an employee responsible for the laboratory (laboratory technician) who often receives a salary without making any effort, thanks to political mediation.
6- Depletion of Primary Education Staff : Public primary education is nearly devoid of tenured teachers for two main reasons: First, the deliberate emptying of this sector to revitalize private schools and inject students into them; the last round of teacher appointments in primary was in 2010. The second reason is the practice of “secondment”—transferring primary teachers to supervisory positions in secondary schools when they are not actually interested in teaching. Supervisory positions then become what I call “the salon.” Again, the reason is political favoritism. However, at the beginning of this academic year, 2025–2026, I noticed the return of some of those seconded to their original positions in primary education to resume teaching duties—an excellent initiative to the credit of this sector.
7- Nepotism and a Lack of Competence : It happens that a director retires, and his wife or son is appointed to manage the school! There may be someone within the school staff more qualified for the administrative tasks, but political influence intervenes and reverses the appointment. If irony is warranted, this nepotistic system is not unfamiliar to us: the Syrian Ba’athist regime previously pioneered models of “nepotistic republics”—are we to replicate this in Jabal Amel?
8- Waste of school infrastructure : In the Tyre region, there are large, old school buildings with very few students. Isn’t this a waste in terms of educational contracts and surplus buildings? Why aren’t the nearby schools merged into one building?
No society can achieve progress without education: national, civic, moral, humanistic, scientific, artistic education… So what about our Lebanese society, which, since 1969, has been going from war to invasion, from crisis to catastrophe, from assassination to plunder?
How can we expect a teacher to instill the values of freedom, courage, and genuine citizenship when he is subservient to a leader, a party, a movement, or a political current? How can his students identify with him except by becoming mere copies of him?
A French child, for example, grows up in a family, kindergarten, and school that teach him, with passion and sincerity, the French national anthem before the alphabet.
Lebanon’s chronic tragedy, however, is that the majority of its public and private schools, in areas with a particular sectarian affiliation, indoctrinate children daily with religious and sectarian chants, parroting them to instill in their impressionable minds a partisan and sectarian allegiance directed toward an “external” leadership! Do we hear or read about a similar situation in any other country besides Lebanon? Is the president’s portrait ever removed from an official building anywhere but in Lebanon? How can we accept the deliberate burial of our Lebanese identity?
Based on these “uneducational sins” committed by influential political entities against this exhausted nation and these lost generations caught between a fragmented culture here, a reckless affiliation there, and a technological apathy in “a middle ground,” it is necessary to propose a set of solutions or recommendations, which can be summarized directly as follows:
First: Reviving the objective, scientific, and rigorous role of the Civil Service Council in conducting fair and transparent recruitment examinations for teachers, while disregarding any political pressure, regardless of its source. Only then will the most qualified candidates attain the educational positions they deserve.
Second: Abolish the Guidance and Counseling Office – a gateway to waste and inactivity – and restore the authority of educational inspection, the Audit Bureau, and all other official institutions, so that the state, including the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, can regain its influence and oversight, and the law can be applied to everyone according to the logic of “duty and right”.
Third (and in my view, the most important): Updating the educational curricula from kindergarten through the third year of secondary school. I acknowledge that our science curricula are prestigious and distinguished, despite the absence of some essential elements, such as the use of laboratories. However, our humanities curricula suffer from an excess of padding and redundancy. Instead of providing students with an interactive, creative, and engaging learning environment, they become a source of boredom, tedium, and rote memorization, as students repeat information without applying it to their daily lives. Official examinations are a prime example of this: monotonous and parrot-like exams that force students to desperately chase after a certificate, only to have their knowledge and skills erased after the exam. Knowledge becomes merely a utilitarian tool for a temporary end.
Furthermore, these exams represent a significant drain on resources; the logical alternative is university entrance exams conducted according to their own standards and reputation.
As a philosophy professor, I find it difficult to simplify abstract concepts for my students, so I resort to real-life examples, and sometimes even to provoking them to express their experiences. I sometimes treat them like my own children; some call me “Mama,” and if I get angry with one of them, they playfully call me “Jaafar.” Every academic year, I conclude my “Greek Civilization” class with a performance of the Rahbani brothers’ play ” The Last Days of Socrates ,” even though some students refuse to watch it for religious reasons.
Frankly, we are all children, no matter our age; we are all children the moment we sit down to study.
I also emphasize the need to strengthen the role of libraries in public schools and encourage students to read and discuss books and novels during class. This was the case in the old curricula before 2001, especially in Arabic, French, and English literature. The profound influence of the plays of William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and Cornell, or the novels of Khalil Gibran and the poems of Al-Mutanabbi, on our thought and consciousness cannot be denied. Imagine how much the learners’ horizons would broaden and their creative imaginations would be enriched in science, poetry, art, and music if we nourished them with this wealth of knowledge and wisdom.
Fourth: Involving parents in the teaching/learning process. Unfortunately, the painful saying, “If he doesn’t want to learn, throw him into public school!” has become ingrained in many minds.
This phrase pains me. Before the civil war, public schools, especially secondary schools, were towering educational institutions that rivaled the most prestigious private schools. Secondary schools were hubs of cultural and scientific exchange, producing elites in various fields. Regular meetings between parents, on the one hand, and teachers and administration, on the other, addressed shortcomings in student performance and identified weaknesses, while also providing an opportunity to recognize and celebrate their progress and creativity.
Fifth: Exercise caution before granting licenses for new private schools. These schools are spreading alarmingly throughout Lebanon, manipulating parents’ emotions and aspirations for their children through advertising. I always feel that fostering a climate of disrespect for public education is a valuable service to private schools. I reiterate that most of the teachers who promote private schools are themselves teachers in the public secondary education system, undergoing training courses conducted by the Ministry, but the sole beneficiary of these courses is the private school student.
Sixth: The principal must ensure that the legal quota is applied fairly to all teachers. A frustrated teacher will take out their frustration on their students. Advanced and progressive societies flourish through fair laws and equal opportunities, regardless of class, status, or skill.
I wrote the above on my own full responsibility. Formal education is my cause, and I have no regrets. I am a philosophy professor who teaches with passion and conscience, and the first concept I instill in my students is that of “duty and right,” along with the principles of courage, boldness, tolerance, openness to others, and respect for their feelings, opinions, and beliefs.
I have been teaching philosophy for thirty-three years… I am not just an employee. I will retire in six years, but the public school will remain a bright corner in my heart.
I am a free person, and I hope that the generations I have taught have been granted at least a minimum of freedom to become truly human.
(*) This article does not mean, in any way, that it is general and applicable to the public and private education sectors, nor to all managers, whether in primary or secondary education.
This article is the culmination of my personal experience and my communication with a considerable number of Lebanese citizens, educators, students, parents, friends and relatives, concerned with the advancement of formal education in Lebanon… hence the need for clarification.