Reflection #3

            After watching the presidential debate tonight, I am even more looking forward to future debates when the candidates talk about foreign policy issues as opposed to the domestic issues that were discussed tonight. However, the debate still got me thinking about civil society in the Middle East mainly through the topic of education, which was a popular subject during tonight’s event. For the past two weeks I have spent time researching education in Saudi Arabia for the country brief this week, and I find it to be a very important topic when it comes to democratization in the Arab world. Many politicians in the US like to talk about education being “the future” and as cliché as it sounds, it really is true. In the Middle East, a strong educational system, for both men and women, is vital and needs to be developed. Education is the future; as we saw in the Arab Spring protests, many of the protestors supporting democratization were of younger generations. With educational improvement, young men and women from the Middle East can become informed on many issues and develop their owns beliefs and opinions about government. Without education, people cannot be exposed to new ideas and hence the norms that have long been established stay in place. Now that many of those norms have been shattered with the Arab Spring, the surge of new ideas has to continue – and that begins with education.