The talking cat and the educational methods
Laroussi entered the conference room, breathless, wiping his face and forehead with his handkerchief. He sat on the speaker's chair for a while to rest and catch his breath and all eyes turned to him. It was barely 1 pm, the meeting point. Usually, he never arrived late. He said to everyone, "Excuse me for the delay." He then began his speech by addressing the students of the baccalaureate and the first and second years of science and literary, Arabized and bilingual who were in the room, "Today, I was at a friend's house in Bir Mourad Raice and I witnessed an extravagant miracle that I had never seen in my life. I saw a cat talking! Yes, a cat talking! Something incredible, but true. I saw it with my own eyes. Laroussi spoke with passion, and sometimes he went to the students in the front rows, sometimes to those sitting in the middle. He then addressed those who are sitting on the right, after he returned to the left and said, "Yes, something incredible, but it happened anyway".
Laroussi continued: "I was not alone in this friend's house, but there were three friends of mine when his cat appeared before us". To our attention, the cat said, "O you who are distracted!" We looked but we only found the cat. We searched for the voice source and found nobody but the cat. It said, "I'm the one talking, I'm the cat and if we weren't at the end of the world, I wouldn't have spoken". We started rubbing our eyes and we didn't believe it. The cat continued: "People have become ungodly and vicious. They have to go back on the right track before having a disaster". The cat then gave the two testimonies and left the room.
Laroussi stopped for a moment as he stared at the faces of the students, then asked in an imploring tone, "Do you believe what I said?"
The students replied with one voice, "Yes, we believe". He heard a voice from the middle of the room saying, "I can't believe it". Another voice followed to the right, "I don't believe it".
Laroussi asked the two students to introduce themselves. Laroussi knew that one of them belonged to the bilingual baccalaureate class and the second to the second class of Arabic literature. He said to the first student, "But I saw it myself, you don’t believe me?"
The student replied, "God preserve you, teacher, but I can only believe what I see with my eyes".
Laroussi turned impatiently towards the other and said with disapproval, "And you too do not believe me, and I tell you that I saw it with my own eyes". The student replied, "Sorry, teacher, I don't want to be silly, but if I saw the cat talking with my eyes, I wouldn't believe it. I believe my reason and not my eyes. The senses can be deceived but you can't fool the mind”.
A buzz began among the students and the voice of some of them rose, rejecting the behaviour of two students. I almost got up from my seat to scold these two stupid students. Denied a professor like Laroussi is an incomparable stupidity and insolence. However, it was customary for the professors to intervene in the debate only after the lecture. At that moment, I see him reaching out to them and clasping their hands saying, "I congratulate you with all my heart, you made me rejoice. You look at things with your minds, and not be fooled by superstitions and illusions. I hope that our students become like you and they are not deceived by impostors or by those who exploit their feelings".
I sank into my seat. His attitude surprised me like the other students. They protested by shouting that they believed him personally and not what he said.
Laroussi replied, "Remember the advice of the bird to the hunter in the stories of Kalila and Dimna. Do not believe what reason does not accept". He added, "Trust your minds, and do not accept what is unreasonable in any case. Let me start my lecture now. What you saw was an introduction. I have not seen a cat in the Bir Murad Raice neighbourhood. I deliberately delayed for testing the impact of our school programs on the minds of our students and you saw the result".
I sweated with my whole body and I was ashamed of myself. How to blame students if their teacher easily believes what he is told?
Laroussi clarified in his lecture that the program has an important role to play in pushing the generation on the path of progress, or keeping it blocked. Current approaches in most subjects focus on the accumulation of information not to digest it and on memory not on thought. An example of this is the high school literature program, in which there is no text to develop thinking and get the student used to reasoning. It focuses certainly on the promotion of noble emotions and human values, but the program neglects the mental texts which frequently appear in the Arab heritage since Ibn al-Muqaffa ', al-Mutazala and Ibn Rushd until the thinkers of the Renaissance.
He criticized selective approaches to history based on single thinking, censoring and suppressing many historical events because they are contrary to the political and partisan vision of the government, thus neglecting the analysis of events and the presentation of different point of views. He also criticized the prejudices spread against intellectuals. Instead of providing students with a mental approach to criticize what they read and judge for themselves, we have provided ready-made judgments against Arab and Western thinkers. We have fortified their minds against them. We have considered Ibn al-Muqaffa an unbeliever and Ibn Rushd a perverted while we have considered Marx, Engels, Freud, Darwin, Hegel and Sartre as atheists. Even those who tried to awaken the Arab spirit of that time did not escape the accusations brought against them like Taha Hussein, Salama Moussa, Ali Abdel Razek, Zaki Najib Mahmoud and others.
As European students read their thinkers and criticize their theories, highlighting their negative and positive aspects with clear arguments and convincing evidence, our students only know the names of these thinkers and reject their thoughts without reading them. European students digest and assimilate science. Our students acquired scientific information without any impact on their lives. Our ancestors adapted the rational methods even in religion: the scholars of the Hadiths of the Holy Prophet rejected the Hadiths which reason does not accept. In conclusion, Laroussi stressed the need to prepare balanced programs that are concerned with the mind, encourage critical thinking, and give importance to the body and the conscience.
Abdellah Khammar
An extract taken from the novel: Entry bell to class