Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) Education Ministerial Meeting in Amman, Jordan, May 22-23, 2005

1:15 P.M. EDT

Real Audio of Transcript

MR. MACINNES: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center here in Washington. We are delighted today to have a panel here to discuss the upcoming Educational Ministerial to be held in Jordan next week. We have also New York with us via DVC and there may be questions from New York.

We've had some substitutions here. Mr. Carpenter is traveling to the Middle East and is not available today. His very able deputy, David Mulenex, is sitting in. He's the Regional Coordinator for the Office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative. We have D.J. Nordquist from the Department of Education, the Press Spokesperson. We have Tom Farrell from the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs: He's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Academic Programs. And we have Azza El-Abd from USAID, whom many of you may know.

We're going to start off with each person giving a short statement. David is going to give us a little overview of the upcoming event and then we'll go into question and answers. Please, when you do the question and answers, identify yourself and if you have a question for a specific person, let us know who you'd like to answer that or else it can go to the group.

So please, David, go ahead.

MR. MULENEX: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with you. Scott Carpenter is indeed leaving Washington today. Some of you may have seen me before. I was so often mistaken for Scott that a few weeks ago I shaved my beard so that I could be told apart from him. What I wanted to do in the few moments that are available to me as introduction is really to give you some sense of how we got to this very auspicious event of the first ever Education Ministerial between G-8 countries and countries of the Broader Middle East and North Africa.

The story is a familiar one to some of you, I am sure, and began about a year ago, as we were engaging in our initial discussions with the region on what came to be known as the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative. And that initiative, undertaken in response to the forces of change that were already very, very prevalent in the region, and calling on G-8 countries to find ways to be supportive of the countries in the region, themselves undertaking significant reforms in economic areas and political areas and educational areas and advancing the cause of women and youth, was a really very important time for us. I think as we had our discussions with the region and across the G-8, we understood that we would not pursue one set of agenda items at the expense of others and that from the first declarations that were made at Sea Island during the U.S. presidency of the G-8 last year, flanked with leaders from the region, it was very clear that education was one of the things that we found most vitally important in order to contribute to the region's own vision of its future, its prosperity, its success of its citizens individually and collectively.

So it's very important to understand that the roots of what we have in education go back some distance and they are the result of some very extended and careful deliberations with the region.

Many of you know that at the G-8 [Summit last year] a number of statements were made that were supportive of various efforts taken in the areas in literacy and some groundwork was laid in the broader areas of access to education, quality of education and relevance of education to the marketplace, that I think are very important to keep in mind as we are in the last days of the run-up to this very important ministerial. These kinds of questions were amplified in New York in September when we had the first preparatory meeting for the Forum for the Future, and emerging out of that was a clear sense that countries from the region -- in the case of literacy, Algeria and Afghanistan -- would take a very strong leadership role in helping to define the agenda that the region saw for itself. I think it's important to underline that -- that the agenda in education is the agenda that the region is defining. It's not something that is being defined in any other way.

At the Rabat first Forum for the Future last December, there was an agreement made to mount an education ministerial. The Government of Jordan -- a leader in education reform in the region -- very significantly undertook to organize this particular ministerial meeting and the UK, the incoming president of the G-8, has been very, very active in supporting that. So again, it's a partnership between the region and the G-8.

In the last several months there have been a number of other meetings that have gone on in support of preparations for this ministerial. There was an important meeting in Algiers to develop an action program in literacy that will be taken forward to ministers in this educational ministerial meeting in the next few days. There were some other meetings in London, some meetings in Paris. There's a lot of interest, a lot of resources coming into play, a lot of discussions going into this educational ministerial.

So that's by way of background. I'm going to say a couple more things and that is sort of to give you again the context of why we think education is so terribly important. Demographically, you all know that we're looking at a region where about two-thirds of the people are under the age of 25, about half under the age of 15, and we're looking at a region that is not homogenous but quite heterogeneous. In some countries there are challenges in basic education still. One thinks of parts of rural Yemen, for example, where illiteracy among girls and women is still at 70 percent. One thinks of other countries in the region where the gender difference doesn't exist and overall literacy is about 90 percent, some of the Gulf countries, for example.

So one doesn't have a one-size-fits-all approach to the challenges of education. What you do have as a cross-cutting theme is the idea coming from the region itself that well-educated youth are going to be the most responsible executors of their own future so that those young people, boys and girls, men and women, who are well-educated, have an international bent to their thinking, are well-suited in terms of being able to adapt to a workplace where high-value-added knowledge is important -- most countries are aiming at knowledge-based industries as the source of their future economic growth -- all of these things rely on an education system and on educational principles that make sense in terms of individual countries, make sense in terms of society, but also make sense in terms of the very competitive global international environment that we all live in.

So these are the sort of things that we see coming to the fore and we see this meeting in Jordan as a very, very important opportunity for those of us in the G-8 to listen to what ministers in the region are saying to us, to give some thoughts from our own experience which may be helpful to meeting some of the challenges that will be enunciated by ministers and senior officials from the region, and together to come up with some ideas about the way forward that make sense in terms of meeting the challenges to the region.

Now, later on you'll have a chance to ask some questions and we can talk about specific programs and things that are already underway, but I wanted to stop here with this frame and let my colleagues speak a little bit because I think it's very important that you hear some of the activities that they've involved in. We are delighted, I will say, as the State Department, that Secretary of Education Spellings is leading the U.S. delegation to this ministerial. We think that shows as clearly as anything that we could do how terribly important the United States thinks this initiative is.

And with that, I think I will pass the baton to my colleague.

MS. NORDQUIST: Well, David mentioned Secretary Spellings is very excited to lead the U.S. delegation to this meeting. It's a meeting of firsts. I think David talked about that a little bit. It's the first meeting of G-8 BMENA on education. She is the first Secretary of Education to travel to Jordan. It's the first time she's led a U.S. delegation. She's been in office a little over a hundred days now.

Generally speaking, in the United States, we've talked about education reform now for anywhere from 40 to 50 years, depending on when you start the clock, whether it be Brown v. Board of Education, which was the landmark Supreme Court decision that desegregated our schools, to the Elementary and Secondary Act which was first passed in 1965, which was the first time there was a serious federal effort focused on education policy. So we've been talking about it for a long time. It wasn't until 2001 that we actually had a serious attempt at education reform in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act through which President Bush clearly showed that he's quite interested in education reform in the United States. No Child Left Behind really focuses on, exactly as you would think the title of the law talks about, which is that in the United States we're not perfect. Traditionally, we've had groups of students that have been left behind. In our nation those tend to be the disadvantaged minority groups, special education children, the handicapped. And this law really focuses on making sure that every child gets the quality education and access to education that they deserve.

So Secretary Spellings is excited to come to this ministerial to lead the U.S. delegation and she's really there to listen and learn from all the other countries in the room and she hopes that it's going to be a productive meeting.

MR. FARRELL: Thank you, DJ. My name is Tom Farrell and I represent the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs at the State Department. DJ has given us the sense of what motivates us in the delegation and David has ably set the context for us. The Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs is honored to be part of Secretary Spellings' delegation, because we have worked collectively and in partnership, first with all of the G-8 countries in a multinational and bilateral way, and of course with all of the BMENA nations, so we see ourselves, as part of the State Department, as one of the agencies of government of continuing strong partnership approaches primarily focused on higher education but also in the area of quality, development of teacher programs, access issues, especially as they relate to English, and also capacity building, not only in the BMENA countries but also in the United States.

One of the key elements of partnership for us is what benefits the United States and the people of the United States, the students in the United States -- one of our biggest efforts currently in the BMENA region are bringing scores of young teachers from these regions, teachers in training, to educate American college students in the languages of those countries. So that's a seminal part of the Fulbright Program.

So we're there to learn, to listen, to see how we can improve some of our traditional and core programs in a binational sense but also to make sure that we convey the need on behalf of the United States to benefit from the gifts and the resources that these partner nations have to offer so we can improve access, quality and our own capacity.

MS. EL-ABD: Good afternoon, my name is Azza El-Abd. I work for the U.S. Agency for International Development and I'm delighted to be here and to be part of the delegation. This is a very exciting opportunity.

Let me talk a little bit about USAID's role in the BMENA initiative, the G-8 BMENA initiative. We have been participating in the initiative from the early stages, as David gave a broad view of the history there. We provide the technical leadership in terms of education overseas. USAID has 71 missions worldwide. We operate in the field with 50 percent of our workforce being foreign nationals. So what we bring into the table is basically the technical leadership in managing and designing education programs and we are delighted about the topics that are going to be presented at the meeting because that's exactly the areas that we are focusing on. We focus in the BMENA region on increasing access, equitable access of education opportunities, improving the quality and relevance of education, improving literacy, particularly focusing on women and the disadvantaged, and of course strengthening the workforce is very important to build the right mix of skills for the youth in the region to compete in the global workforce.

And I think I'll leave it at that.

MR. MACINNES: Thank you all very much. We'll go to questions now. Please identify yourself and wait for the microphone.

QUESTION: My name is Tamman Al-Barazi from Alwatan Alarabi Magazine. Really, the subject of education, when it comes to United States, as we hear often on the satellite stations programs, you know, that United States' intention, real intention, is to change the education, the Islamic education system in the Arab world and the Muslim world. And we see a lot of criticism for that and you just brush it -- oh, that's not right, but it's being repeated again and again.

So given this almost repeated every day on the -- in the Arab media. The second, you know, about the No Child Left Behind, does that -- for example, I read in The Washington Post that this also can -- financial aid, I mean, can be given to religious schooling, private religious schooling. Can you clarify that?

MR. MACINNES: Okay, we have two questions there, one on No Child Left Behind and one on Islamic --

MS. NORDQUIST: Do you want to take the first one?

MR. MULENEX: Well, let me answer your question about Islamic education in a very direct way. And it is by telling you that I've been in classrooms in the Arab world and when I've been in Yemen in rural classrooms and been there in a classroom with a leaking roof, no heat, and intermittent water supplies. I've been in classrooms with 150 eight-year-olds, one teacher, 50 books. The books were out of date. I didn't talk to that teacher about Islamic education, I didn't talk to that principal of the school about Islamic education. What we talked about was how do you get the school fixed, how do you get up-to-date materials into the curriculum. I was in science and math classes. I've been in history classes. How do we get the level of knowledge that young people, boys and girls -- in some cases, how do we get adequate facilities for girls so that they can go to school? How do we deal with that problem?

I've been in schools of a very different kind in the Gulf where I've gone into a classroom and I see 20 first graders. They're clustered around three or four tables. They've got computers. They've got a great teacher. She's moving the kids around. The kids are alive. You know, she's got a different situation completely than that teacher in Yemen.
Again, we didn't talk about Islamic education. We talked about how much work it took for that teacher to acquire the skills that she needed to go from speaking in front of a class to students to being able to interact with each of the kids in her classroom and how, once she had accomplished that, how terribly exciting it was for as a teacher to work with those kids.

So if you want to know from me what I think about that argument that we're trying to in some way undermine Islamic education, it's just not part of my experience. You know, I've been in schools in Gaza. I've been in schools all over the region. When I talk to teachers, I talk to kids, I talk to principals, talk to people in ministries of education, this issue is rarely raised with us because it's very obvious from the kinds of interactions that we've having with educators that our interest is education and education for young people.

MS. NORDQUIST: In answer to your second question, I don't know when the story was in The Washington Post. I personally don't have knowledge of [the relationship between] No Child Left Behind and religious education. I don't know if you're possibly confused with --

QUESTION: Charter schools?

QUESTION: You know, the money --

MS. NORDQUIST: Do you mean charter schools?

QUESTION: According to the plan or the program, the money can be taken and spent, right, by the parents, right, on any education they want?

MS. NORDQUIST: No.

QUESTION: That's what they understand.

MS. NORDQUIST: Are you talking about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program? That is a separate program from No Child Left Behind and that is the first federally funded voucher program in the United States. It's only for the District of Columbia. It's a pilot program. We're in our second year. And yes, the parents are given tuition vouchers and they can choose the school of their choice. It can be a public school, a charter school, a religious school --

QUESTION: Even if they choose religious?

MS. NORDQUIST: Yeah, and it could be an Islamic school. It could be any religion.

MR. MACINNES: Samir.

QUESTION: Samir Nader, Radio Sawa. I'd like to ask Mr. David to give us more information about the meeting in Jordan. Is this going to be only attended by ministers of education? Will there be any -- will there be ministers from all the G-8 countries and when it's going to take place and can you give us more details about it?

MR. MULENEX: I can give you a few more details about it. I think we've got a fact sheet that's available, right, that's on this -- we'll have one shortly available. The ministerial itself is on the 23rd of this month. It follows immediately on the World Economic Forum meeting that's being held at the Dead Sea. I think we have representatives from all G-8 countries attending, mostly ministers, as I understand it. And I think we have a very good representation of education ministers from the region. I don't think my notes exactly tell me how many, but we have a good representation of people coming -- it's really quite extraordinary to think that a meeting like this has not happened before.

And you know, it's a compliment to my many colleagues across this government and my colleagues across governments in the region that they've worked so hard to put this together. You know, ministerials are not very long meetings. They generally are a half day or so to put these things together and get issues put to the table. The train of work that goes before them is truly significant and, in this case, I think, is quite exceptional. So I think maybe rather than try to go through the fact sheet, the fact sheet will be available shortly and you can see that.

MS. EL-ABD: Can I just add in terms of the -- as David pointed out, the work has begun quite a bit of time ago and several meetings have been taking place and communications. On the sub-ministerial, the sub-cabinet meetings that take place the day before the ministerial, there will be a lot of discussion revolving around four themes and that's why I mentioned how we're very excited because of things are typical of the program areas that we are also involved in. They were talking about education reform in general or successful factors for education reform. We're talking about literacy and access as theme. The third theme is equity and social inclusion and then quality and relevance of education. And the idea is to have these discussion or dialogue with the expert representatives and come up with a framework of action to present to the ministers the following day.

MR. MACINNESS: Thank you. Aya.

QUESTION: Aya Batrawy, Kuwait News Agency. A few questions. First question is if someone can just sum up in one line for me what is the purpose of this meeting and why the U.S. is involved. The second question is are there any, you know, money going into this? Is the U.S. planning on proposing any kind of aid? And the third question is how much do you actually expect to get out of this, considering it's so broad, like you said, the U.S. -- I mean, the Middle East is not homogenous. It's a half-a-day meetings. What really are you expecting to come out with this?

MR. MULENEX: I mean, shall I start? I'm not sure I can give you one sentence. By the way, congratulations on getting the right to vote in Kuwait.

I think the purpose of this meeting, as DJ indicated, is that we want to put into place a set of discussions where we have ministers speaking and listening to one another. If you want me to say, "Here are the three things that are going come out of that meeting," that would be presumptuous on my part because I would be anticipating what the ministers are going to say. I have some idea of what our Secretary of Education is going to say because I've seen a preview of her remarks, but I would not be so presumptuous as to say what other ministers would be saying.

In terms of money, I think you need to see this ministerial as a very, very important benchmark along a process. The outcome of this ministerial will be work leading to a presentation at the next Forum for the Future in Bahrain in November of this year and I think there will be some attempts to elaborate the results of this ministerial meeting between the conclusion of the ministerial and the time of Bahrain. So if you ask about money, clearly money is an issue. It's a different issue for different countries in the region. And we have to come to some terms about that.

MS. EL-ABD: I'll add something, a footnote to that. Also, the ministerial is -- what we hope is we can take advantage of the World Economic Forum, as David was mentioning, and have some engagement with the private sector who is attending the conference. As you know, to resolve the education issues or challenges, you need partnerships, partnerships not only between governments and donor agencies, but you definitely need the private sector involved. And we hope to take advantage of that opportunity as well.

MR. MACINNESS: A follow-up?

QUESTION: To clarify -- sorry. I just want to clarify what is the U.S. hoping to get out of this meeting? Why is the U.S. involved? What is it hoping to get? And maybe you can answer this for me, please, because you were sort of talking about it but maybe you could be more specific?

MR. FARRELL: You're pointing to me? Oh. (Laughter.) Well, you know, I can't underline enough what David said about the occasion of heads of major institutions, these ministries, actually ministers or cabinet level secretaries, discussing priority issues. I mean, we in our own ways are bureaucrats, part of an engine that gets fueled by the vision of our leaders. So the mere fact of the ministers sitting down together, being engaged in both bilateral and multilateral discussions, provides our cabinet departments and our ministries with the vision and a kind of ideological fuel. So that's a key element. We don't get it any other way.

The United States is there because in fact we are a major cooperating and partner nation and we want to understand the best way to move forward in a partnership mode and the best way to see how to target our resources in a partnership way. So this is very much the learning experience for us and, for our part of the State Department, a way to make sure that our traditional exchange programs are serving wider interests. For us, that's why we're happy to be included.

MR. MULENEX: If I could add a footnote, I would say our commitment to education is very much about our commitment to the future prosperity and stability of this region. There's a book that was written back in the early 20th century by John Dewey called Education and Democracy, which some of you may have read, some of you may not have read. It's a somewhat lengthy book written in that academic style of the first quarter of the 20th century.

But one of the points that Dewey is making is that a sound education is the best investment a country can make for the future success of its people and for the future success of its society. And I think we strongly believe that in the United States. And I think we are hearing from ministers in the region that they, too, share this perspective.

It doesn't mean that what Secretary of Education Spellings might bring to the table as the U.S. experience is one that's wholesale applicable to any country of the region. But it does mean that there is a sort of shared sense that I think many of us have as parents, as members of our society, that the future lies in our children and that investment in our children's education is an investment in the future of our own societies. And I think that's in part what this is about.

MR. MACINNESS: Thank you. Thomas.

QUESTION: Thomas Gorguissian, Al Gomhouria, Egypt. Regarding these four points you mentioned -- education reform and literacy and equity and I'm sorry that maybe you say equity and social inclusion -- can you a little bit elaborate so I can even explain to my readers what I mean when I write this?

MS. EL-ABD: Well, we'll probably have more information on that --

QUESTION: I mean, how would you be applicable? You know, because if you say to somebody "equity and social inclusion," for example, besides the other things, what does exactly mean? This is my first question. I have other questions, too.

MS. EL-ABD: Yeah. What we mean here is education, basically, for which I'm using the UNESCO term, education for all, is how to reach the groups or to make it accessible to everyone. We're talking about women, other disadvantaged groups, and what we are doing in the roundtables is sharing ideas among countries. Education is very nationally based, but they're also a lot of advantages to sharing ideas and best practices of what works. Something could work in Morocco that perhaps may have applications in Egypt. And as we saw in several of the meetings in other areas or, for instance, in literacy where there was this exchange of information, it proved very, very useful in terms of how to replicate programs and expand on them, whether it's public-private partnership or other models, getting the communities involved or other areas.

QUESTION: My second and third question. This reform thing, it's -- or mainly this education forum or this related to G-8 and Sea Island, all this process. And at that time, it was raised the issue to include or not include, according to either this side or that side, both Afghanistan and Turkey. Are these people included in this education reform process and how they are included?

And my third question is raising general -- I mean, when my colleague ask a question, it seems that either you -- definitely you know the answer but you are not answering question. For some of them, generalizing. I mean, it's very interesting to know how this -- all of us, all over the world, we know the education, the importance of education, to be educated. Even my grandmother knows. But the whole idea is how it's going to be applied and what is American side is giving. Money? Experience? Ideas? Textbooks? Printing house? All this, I mean -- can you a little bit elaborate? I am asking with good intention, anyway.

MR. MULENEX: Okay. Well, what I can do, I think, that may help you a little bit is I can talk about some of the things that we do in the Middle East Partnership Initiative and maybe others can talk about some of the things that they're doing concretely. For example, we operate something called the Partnership Schools Program, in which we've invested about $10 million so far. And it's really designed to work at the school level to develop some model approaches to training teachers, to working with curricula material that are exciting children, to work with school administrators who are a very critical element in creating the learning environment, and to work with parents to try to get parents interested in supporting their children's education. And we're working in Oman and Algeria and Tunisia in this program right now.

We have another program that's called My Arabic Library. As many of you know, the number of books that are available as recreational reading material is sometimes quite limited in the region. And so what we have done is try to take some things that we think are suitable for third and fourth graders. You know, we've made those available in Arabic translation. They've been looked at by ministries of education and others just to determine that they're suitable for children at that targeted level. And we're trying to work to get those materials out. We're launching [these books] now [in] 3,000 schools in Lebanon; Jordan and in Bahrain will be using some of these materials in their classrooms. We're training the teachers on how to use these in an instructional studying. But the most important part of this is that kids have something fun to read. So we're doing those kinds of things.

We mentioned Jordan, quite specifically, as a leader in the region. We have put $4.5 million of our money in support for the Jordan Education Initiative, which is working on new curricula, it's looking at an online English as a Foreign Language program. It's doing some very concrete things. We're working in the discovery schools that have been set up under the Jordan Educational Initiative. We're working on -- I'll just list these off. If you want more details, you can see me later because I know my colleagues will have things to say as well. We're working in civic education programs in several countries in the region to really work with children, to have them have some understanding of their relation to their community and a sense of civic responsibility -- $4 million in that program. We've got universal partnership programs that we're doing in large measure with Tom [Farrell] and his colleagues. We have student leaders programs, where we identify students from the region, bring them to the United States, give them an experience here that's really quite unique and then give them the opportunity to go back and do a project using their experience in the United States.

We've done some very interesting programs in single countries, like we did an Internet program in Yemeni high schools. For example, I was there when we opened the first of the Internet high schools there. It was quite an exciting moment for the kids and for the teachers and for everybody else there. So we're doing a lot of very, very concrete things and the list goes on and on. But I want to let my colleagues have a chance to --

MR. FARRELL: You asked about Afghanistan and Turkey. Afghanistan, I think if we failed to mention, has been a key part -- a participant and has made quite a bit of contribution to this effort, especially in the area of literacy. In Rabat, they presented a paper and I also think they worked on that for the Algiers meeting as well, so they're very much involved in it.

I can also speak about Turkey and Pakistan. We're investing in Pakistan with USAID and the Fulbright Program a significant amount of money, about $10 million a year, for new scholarships in the university and junior staff development sector in Pakistan for graduate level study, for the Ph.D., so that Pakistan can provide itself with the teaching faculty in its growing university system.

Turkey will become next year the largest State Department-funded Fulbright Program in the world. It's not as large as the Pakistan one because AID is contributing to that, but certainly the contribution from the U.S. State Department to Fulbright in Turkey will rise above its contributions to the Fulbright Program in Germany and Japan and Brazil, which had been some of the largest in the world. And in Turkey, we're looking for, once again, graduate level study primarily as well as work in the area of teacher development, working with a number of leading Turkish institutions to provide opportunities for practical training for young teachers in development in the United States. So those are some major areas of increase related to the general policy for collaboration with BMENA partners.

MS. EL-ABD: If I may go back to what we were talking about the areas and here's where we sit in as USAID. We are for access and when I talked about we are looking at increasing access, our approach is to provide scholarships. We approach it through, really, or we mean scholarship programs, which we have [for formal] instruction and non-formal education.

In Pakistan, for instance, we opened 2,800 literacy centers. To prepare children for school, we have early childhood programs. The Sesame Street program, which is reaching 87 percent of the Egyptian youngsters or children, is one of those programs. We have also a very successful program with Jordan on curriculum development for kindergarten.

We're also looking at literacy programs through the formal and non-formal education system. We do a lot of teacher training and then we look at school-to-work programs, basically focusing on preparing the youth for the job market.

MR. MACINNESS: Shall we have another round?

MR. MULENEX: Yes, please.

QUESTION: Just a follow-up on your answer of my first question. You mentioned Yemen. I think after your visit, the government there of Ali Abdullah Salih closed like more than a 1,000 Islamic schools. So still I want to press you on that. What's your position on Islamic schools, given, you know, in Washington, at least, the think tank and all these things, they discover a word called "madrasa," you know, and they said, you know, it is the one which graduating terrorists and so on. But we know in Islamic world, like Pakistan or others or Yemen, really the Islamic education is the education of most people, poor people. So still you are evading to answer my question about Islamic education.

Second question, in fact -- answer this and I'll follow the second one.

MR. MULENEX: Okay, I'll try to be a little bit more direct. What I'm interested is in the performance of education systems. I think, well, what one of the things one has to look at is in those circumstances where Islamic education -- if by what you mean by Islamic education is an educational pattern characterized by rote learning, by the kind of limited exposure of students to critical thinking, to learning about the world, to real interaction with ideas -- then I suppose I would have to say that I'm opposed not to Islamic education but to that kind of an educational system. I would be opposed to that kind of an educational system if it were in the United States and under the auspices of any religion.

If by Islamic education you're asking whether or not the United States believes that this region, which is, you know, more than 90 percent Muslim, is going to have to an education that does not include Islam in the curriculum, I think that would be to accuse us of faulty thinking. I think what we want is to see -- and the region itself has to define this, has to create this – are the alternatives for children that allow them to be the full human beings that they can be in every aspect of that sense: in being religious people, in being professional people, in being good fathers, good mothers, good sons, good daughters, to be whole people. And an education system that does not produce that is going to be seen as faulty, whether it's associated with Islam, a philosophy or some other religion.

So part of the alternative that needs to be created goes right to the heart of your question. For some of the poorest people in the region, they have had no alternative to education for their children. And I think this is part of what the discussions have to be. Not that we have answers. We do not have the answers as the United States. It would be presumptuous for us to bring forward answers. But I think we have to have a situation in which children going through an education system have before them the fullest range of opportunities to realize their potential.

QUESTION: The second question. Can I have the follow-up?

MR. MACINNESS: One more, yes.

QUESTION: You know, what about rogue nation, like you mention always Morocco, Jordan, this country, that country, which is friendly with the United States and so all have a good relation. What about Syria, for example, which its education till a la Saddam Hussein, like Saddam Hussein, the Baathist indoctrination? So what -- are they coming? How many Arab country coming to this conference? Is, for example, Syria been pressurized instead of, you know, being boycotted to change its indoctrination of its children?

MR. MULENEX: I don't know about the Syria question.

MS. EL-ABD: I don't know. I mean, Jordan issued the invitation.

MR. MULENEX: Jordan -- you know, this ministerial is convened by Jordan so Jordan has control of the invitation.

QUESTION: What about the relation with Syria? The educational relation with Syria?

MR. MULENEX: Well, at the moment --

MR. FARRELL: I'm the only one who in the room, I think, who has an educational relationship with Syria. (Laughter.) We have ongoing higher education relationships with Syria. We operate the Fulbright Program in Syria. We send American students to study Arabic in Damascus. I think there was a big article in the paper today about Damascus as a "Mecca" of Arabic study. I use that advisedly. (Laughter.)

The Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs has the authority within the federal government, given by Congress and the Executive Branch, to maintain educational and cultural relationships with many nations. And we have a strong, longstanding program in Syria. We have American NGOs operating in Syria. We have English teaching operating in Syria. So that's ongoing.

MR. MACINNESS: Thank you. Thomas: It'll be very short one. A one-minute question.

QUESTION: So, I mean, the question is related to the issue of discussion you mentioned a lot of times in your last answer because it's really puzzling me. There is an ongoing discussion about the so-called reform in the educational system and content and everything over there and there is a discussion here. But really, being here and being there, rarely I can find a common ground between them.

MR. FARRELL: That's why we're having this meeting [in Jordan].

QUESTION: Yes.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: I mean, I'm telling you not on official level. I'm telling you on the public level. I mean, public -- at least that public because, at the end, those kids are going to be educated or not educated with this system. Let's say, be frank about it. So what is the issue of not discussing these issues? I mean, being like shy or not being -- I don't know what to say, I mean --

MR. FARRELL: Which issues do you think we're not discussing?

QUESTION: For example, the religious issue, which is like education means two things bothering people over there, questioning or puzzling them -- I'm telling you, not bothering them, puzzling them. Two things: history books and religion books. And those who are not part of the discussion, they're trying to derail everything you are doing or trying to do, or with good intentions or with bad intentions, saying that American attempt is to change history books and religion book. If you have an answer, say us and we can correct it or write about it or discuss it at least.

MR. FARRELL: I'm trying to think of a way to answer this in a way that is direct, but still --

QUESTION: If even on background if --

MR. FARRELL: No, I want to be direct but I want to make very clear that I take some issue with your premise, which is that the United States has an agenda to somehow alter history books or alter the way that religion is presented in the school vis-à-vis the countries of the region. That's not our agenda. Our agenda is to listen to the region. The region is saying to us, "Gee, you know, we looked at some of our history books" -- countries like Morocco for example, are in a phase where they're revamping all of their textbooks right now. They're not doing it for us, as the United States, or for the French or for the British. They're doing it because it's part of the way they run their education system.

Now, one of the things that comes in as an issue is: How much money does it take to do that in a country like Morocco? How frequently can they do it? What kind of scholars do they bring to bear to redo those textbooks? Those are questions for the Moroccan Government and the Moroccan Ministry of Education, not for the U.S. Government.

MS. NORDQUIST: If I could just add, the Department of Education is a domestic agency, and I don't know if you all are aware, but we do not control textbooks in this country. I'm just giving you that way of background. We're very decentralized. The federal government is a minority investor in education in the United States. About 8 percent of all funding is from the federal government; the rest is all state and local. And our nation was founded on the idea that education is a state and local issue.

MR. MULENEX: I'll go even further. You know, there's a popular idea that somehow the United States was founded on the notion of being a country where the separation of church and state was intended to somehow make the country less religious. Nothing could be further from the truth. The idea of separation of church and state came about from a very, very simple premise, which was the preservation of the right of every individual to worship as they chose and not to have a single structure for religious belief. But this country has been from the beginning and remains a deeply religious country.

QUESTION: If I can have a clarification. We are not talking about this country. More or less, we know this country.

MR. FARRELL: I'm glad.

QUESTION: I know.

MR. FARRELL: Okay.

QUESTION: It's a matter of what you are doing there. That's the question.

MR. FARRELL: Well, what we're doing is listening. And we do react. I mean, we have seen, for example, the Government of Saudi Arabia has commissioned its own study of its own textbooks. And we see the results of that study. It's not our study. It's their study. And I think this is the point I have to make again and again: Don't think that we have an agenda. We are listening to the region.

QUESTION: But everybody says that they're under pressure -- Saudi Arabia under pressure from you. Everybody writes that in the Middle East.

MR. FARRELL: You can write --

QUESTION: Do you agree with that or not?

MR. FARRELL: No.

QUESTION: You are not pressurizing --

MR. FARRELL: Don't you think that --

QUESTION: You are not pressurizing Arab countries to change their Islamic curriculum or not? Can you say yes or no?

MR. FARRELL: No, we're not. Not in the sense that you mean.

MR. MULENEX: No, we're not. The answer is no.

MR. MACINNESS: I invite people to come up and talk individually but I want to cut us off because we've gone over our hour. Thank you very much and I thank our panel for a very interesting discussion.