Syria, Lebanon, and the Educational Crisis: Educational Technology in a Context of Conflict

Abstract

With the Syrian Civil War entering its sixth year, the educational crisis in Lebanon continues for Syrian refugee children. In this dissertation I discuss the impact of the Syrian Civil War on Lebanon, what barriers to education need to be overcome, and what has been done so far to mitigate the educational crisis. Within this context I discuss my own work volunteering for an NGO that is creating a contextually relevant, unique educational curriculum designed for mobile technology. Does this profoundly moral agenda fit in with the traditional uses of ICTs for Development? This essay is an attempt to answer various questions: With Lebanon no longer dealing with a short­term refugee crisis, but a long­term development challenge, how is the country preparing for its children’s future? With formal education in Lebanon unable to cope with the sheer number of refugee children, can informal educational methods help the situation? Can technology be used to deliver educational services effectively in an environment affected by conflict? And, most importantly, can a small NGO make any discernible, positive impact on the education of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon?

――――――――――――――――――――――――――― Table of Contents Introduction………………………..………………………..……………………………………….…..2 1.1 The Impact of the Syrian Civil War on Lebanon………………………...…………………….….3

1.2 Child refugees and barriers to education……….………………………………….……..5 1.2.1 Fractured Families and the production of

discourse……………....….….……6 1.2.2 Psychological Trauma………………………………………………….………..8 1.2.3 Child labor, safety, and

recruitment…………….…………………..…..….….10 1.3 The State of Education in Lebanon…………………………………………….……..…12

1.3.1 The Plan…………………………………………….………………………..…14 2.1 Aliim Smartphone Schools……………...………………………………….…………………..…15

2.2 Program Goals within a Crisis Affected Environment…………………………………..17

2.3 Experience and Perception…………………………………………………………........19 3.1 Information and Communication Technology for Development……………………………...…20

3.2 ICT in Education: Applying What We’ve Learned………………………………....…...25 Conclusion……………………..………………………..……………………………………...…...…27 Bibliography………..………………………..……………………………………...……………….....29

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Introduction

This thesis stems from an interest in the largest refugee crisis since the Second World

War, and how educational technology is being used to help alleviate that crisis. Since the Syrian

Civil War started five years ago, over 4 million refugees have left Syria, striking out for any place

that offered shelter from conflict. Over two million are children. This was, and still is, a quickly

evolving situation: dramatic events have taken place since I started writing this essay, and my

country of focus, Lebanon, has transitioned from a safe country to one which is struggling to

remain stable. Since the start of the conflict, ISIS (Islamic State) has emerged as a serious

threat to security, a US­led coalition of countries have begun bombing Syria, and European

leaders have been forced to deal with a refugee situation that is now very much a European

problem. This essay is not about the Syrian Civil War; however, it is about whether or not, given

this context, refugee children in Lebanon are able to receive a quality education. In addition, is

mobile technology a viable option for education within an environment dramatically affected by

crisis and/or conflict?

In this essay I will explore the consequences of the now 5­year­long Syrian Civil War on

a micro­ and macro­ level in the context of its impact on the young refugees it has created, and

whether technology can be used to fill the educational gap experienced by a new generation of

refugee children.

Initially, I provide a brief overview of the Syrian Civil War, and focus next on the barriers

to education for refugee children within Lebanon, how the educational response in Lebanon has

failed so far, and what can be done to make it better. I argue that the educational response has

failed largely due to inherent aspects of the Lebanese educational system and growing donor

weariness. In addition, I discuss how concepts like liminality affect refugees’ legal status and

their perception of themselves, how Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital affects the stability

of the state, and how organizations like the UN use narratives as rhetorical devices in order to

produce discourse.

Subsequently, I discuss my own practical experience as a case­study with Aliim

Smartphone Schools, a nonprofit educational organization that is just getting started, and which

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hopes to provide a robust, yet informal education via mobile learning to Syrian refugee children

in Lebanon. I discuss my experience, how new mobile technology can create alternative

possibilities for education, and what the founder of the organization hopes to achieve given the

educational context in Lebanon. I debate the viability of this organization, yet argue that

because Aliim is developing their curriculum specifically for this context, it is likely to succeed.

Finally, I discuss the history, viability, and impact of ICT4D (information and

communication technologies for development), with a focus on its successes and failures in

education and how those results affect Aliim’s ability to make any sort of realistic impact on the

education of Syrian refugee children.

1.1 The Impact of the Syrian Civil War on Lebanon “The government of Lebanon stresses on all occasions its longstanding position reaffirming that Lebanon is neither a country of asylum, nor a final destination for refugees, let alone a country of resettlement” (Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2014:i).

The Syrian Civil War has led to the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War

(Watkins 2013). Since the spring of 2011, roughly 4 million people have been forced to leave

Syria, almost entirely by foot, which has resulted in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt

(listed by number of refugees received; highest to lowest) accepting hundreds of thousands of

Syrians. Egypt, geographically the furthest from Syria, has accepted around 135,000 Syrian

refugees, whereas Turkey and Lebanon have accepted around 1.7 million and 1.2 million

respectively. In Lebanon’s case, which I will be focusing on throughout this essay, the general

population has almost doubled since the start of the crisis. In 2011, when Lebanon first opened

its borders to the individuals and families fleeing Syria, the government and local communities

responded without any hesitation. Kind words, shelter, and support were provided, even when

resources were stretched thin in order to accommodate so many people.

Yet Lebanon has neither signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of

Refugees, nor its 1967 Protocol (LCRP 2014:i). This means that according to the Lebanese

government, the roughly 1.2 million refugees that Lebanon is hosting as of 2015 are not

technically refugees. There are three specific classifications that the Lebanese government

uses to determine status: 1). “persons displaced from Syria,” 2). “persons registered with

UNHCR as refugees,” and 3). “de facto refugees.”

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The “right to flee” which is defined in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human

RIghts as “everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from

persecution,” has been misrepresented by the Lebanese government, which has provided itself

with room to maneuver if they ever become so overwhelmed by refugees that they need to take

drastic measures. What this creates is a liminal or transitory space for these Syrian refugees. In

his book, The ‘Illegal’ Traveller: an auto‐ethnography of borders (2007:330), social

anthropologist Shahram Khosravi, describes liminality in the context of border­crossing:

“Border crossing reinforces and challenges our social and political status. It has its own ritual ­ passport, applying for a visa, security checks and the performance of going through specific places and spaces of border control and customs. Border crossing, being in ‘borderland’, a zone of betwixt and between, a predicament of liminality is per se, in anthropological sense, a ritual. The border ritual reproduces the meaning and order of the state system.”

As the burden of proof is on the asylum seeker to their own status, these people are

seemingly in an impossible situation. In other words, due to Lebanon’s legal ambivalence

towards the millions of refugees that have crossed their border, the Syrian asylum seekers are

“frozen” in a state of non­being; the inherent human rights given to citizens of states have no

application in this context. This situation makes providing other rights more complicated as

these refugees are technically not a national of any state. The right to work and the right to an

education apply only as long as the government of Lebanon feels they apply, if at all. Despite

this, so far the country, citizens, and government of Lebanon have been resoundingly receptive

to the enormous number of Syrian asylum seekers that have entered Lebanon from Syria.

Now, five years since the start of the violence, the refugee crisis in Lebanon has reached

a critical point. Lebanon was, and still is, the most religiously diverse country in the Middle East.

While the influx of refugees hasn’t necessarily changed the diversity, the majority of Syrians are

Sunni Muslim, whereas in Lebanon before the crisis the ratio of Sunni to Shia was almost

exactly the same. This point is an important one to make to highlight one aspect of a quickly

deteriorating social situation: the Syrian Civil War has no end in sight, yet Lebanon is at boiling

point.

This situation is worsened by Lebanon having neither a president nor a functioning

parliament since May 2014. Since former President Michel Suleiman stepped down, lawmakers

have been unable to agree on a successor, and as a result parliament has not convened for

months. This situation has resulted in a lack of public services including trash pickup; for weeks

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in Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut, garbage has been piling up. On August 23rd, clashes

occurred between protesters calling for the resignation of the government and riot police (Naylor

2015). If the state continues its inability to handle basic necessities for the public, the state could

collapse.

According to Kevin Watkins (2013), Executive Director of the Overseas Development

Institute, four out of five displaced Syrians within Lebanon are women and children. Out of 1.2

million, that’s around 960,000. These refugees are people trying to stay healthy, safe, and

educated until they can return to Syria. Unfortunately, most consider their lives “frozen” until

they can return. Whether that will happen soon (if at all), and whether Lebanon is able to

manage and look after all of these people effectively remains to be seen. There can be no doubt

about it— the only way there can be a lasting and effective solution to the current crisis is a

political solution for Syria. The surrounding countries simply do not have the capacity or the

capability, at least in the long­term, of looking after all these people.

Within the government, the power among top officials is divided: there are some political

parties that support the opposition in Syria, while others support the Bashar al­Assad

government in Damascus, Syria’s capital city. The dynamics of power in Lebanon seem to be

changing too quickly to determine who is in control. What is known for sure is that “preserving

the orthodox vision” of the state (Bourdieu 1989:21), is challenging for the present government

as they lack a president or functioning parliament. If the Lebanese government becomes less

stable, and given Bourdieu’s claim (1989:21) that “symbolic capital is nothing other than

economic or cultural capital when it is known or recognized,” the state could erode given a

general lack of recognition of this economic and cultural capital. This opens up opportunities for

a power grab from whichever political/cultural/ideological group acts the quickest and the most

decisively.

So, the surrounding countries can’t maintain their support for refugees indefinitely, nor

can they remain stable if they attempt to do so; as soon as any one of the countries in question

loses stability, there will be an already extremely vulnerable population of people put in the path

of armed extremist groups like the Al­Nusra Front and ISIS.

1.2 Child refugees and barriers to education

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While the refugee crisis in Lebanon is extremely dire, and an understanding of the

context crucial, this paper is about the educational situation for Syrian refugee children in

Lebanon. I will first discuss the status of children and barriers to their education in Lebanon,

which is fundamental for understanding the overarching educational situation of the country, and

for the refugees themselves.

As of right now, almost a million children are not receiving an education. An uneducated

“lost generation” is a distinct possibility. However, the causes are multiple. Transportation is just

one good example: how do you educate children who are unable to travel to school?

Unfortunately, there is a longer list of factors that account for both the dire situation of children,

and lack of educational capacity and quality. The barriers of access to education include, but

are not limited to, fractured families, trauma and psychological problems, child recruitment by

armed groups like ISIS, child labor, poverty, financial instability, child marriage, hunger,

malnutrition, discrimination, sexual and gender­based violence, tensions between refugees and

local citizens, access to healthcare, and access to quality housing (Mayer and Anderson

2015:5). Once these barriers to education are addressed, only then can education itself be

discussed.

1.2.1 Fractured Families and the production of discourse

As stated earlier, Lebanon is currently hosting around 1.2 million refugees, 52 percent of

whom are children. According to the UNHCR, there are now a total of 4 million refugees due to

the Syrian Civil War (UNHCR Press Release 9 July 2015). Surrounding countries are taking

enormous steps to counter this problem: Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are hosting a combined

60 percent of all refugee children from Syria (Future of Syria 2013:9). Keep in mind these

numbers are only registered refugees; many deliberately choose not to register out of fear of

deportation or fear of becoming separated from family. Many families have indeed been torn

apart, with over 3,700 children in both Lebanon and Jordan living without one or both of their

parents. NGOs have been busy on the ground helping to find safe and reliable living

arrangements for separated and unaccompanied children with relatives or with other families. In

fact, despite general impatience and frustration rising within the host countries throughout the

crisis, the generosity of the citizens of those countries has been unparalleled.

A 2013 UN survey in Lebanon found that forty­three of 202 children interviewed said that

at least one of their immediate family members was either dead, detained, or missing (Future of

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Syria 2013:15). Considering most of the refugees are women and children this is not surprising;

many of the fathers who should have moved from Syria with their families have been killed, or

have joined local militia to fight. Growing up without a father is quickly becoming the new normal

for Syrian refugees. As of 2013, there were 36,622 female­headed households in Lebanon

(Future of Syria 2013:15). To make matters worse, many of those families have no idea where

their fathers are, or whether they are even still alive. Stability is a crucial factor to any family, let

alone children who are trying to do well in school or trying to attend school at all.

The question of how families became separated is an aspect of this war the United

Nations has focused on in particular. The UN has released several narratives regarding the

situation of children living in surrounding host­countries. These stories are used as rhetorical

devices; they frame the situation in a way that elicits pity in the reader, and no doubt is designed

to convince the reader to donate to the United Nations for the Syrian crisis. A narrative has been

constructed here; the idea of the UN and the UNHCR hand­selecting stories does not take away

from the fact that the story is framed in truth, and that many other children have similar stories.

However, whose “truth” is it? Are these even stories at all? According to Michel Foucault in The

Discourse on Language (1971),

“the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and

redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role it is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality.”

The “stories” of children in this UN publication have been “controlled, selected, organized and

redistributed,” but by whom, through how many people, and who was it told to in the first place?

The stories attempt balance the power relationship between the UN bureaucracy and the

citizen. The United Nations is in a significant position of power despite working to help Syrian

children. Katy Gardner and David Lewis (1996) for example, discuss Foucault’s various

discourses of power that “while presented as objective and natural, construct their subjects in

particular ways and exercise power over them.” It’s an interesting situation as the Lebanese

government and its refugees are somewhat beholden to the UN in that a large proportion of

money comes from the organization. In this context, while the Lebanese government works with

the UN in order to handle the crisis as best they can, the power and, therefore, influence lies

mostly with the organization, as much of the money needed flows through them.

While discourse can be controlled, experiencing war can have serious effects as a child,

including their ability to learn and think critically. Finding themselves in a transitory context, often

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without families, refugee children are vulnerable to personal and social persuasion. Pierre

Bourdieu says this regarding habitus:

“Habitus thus implies a ‘sense of one’s place’ but also a ‘sense of the place of

others’” and again referring to social position, “through habitus, we have a world of common sense, a world that seems self­evident” (Bourdieu 1989:19).

The trauma these children have experienced could possibly affect their habitus. If their

trauma has affected their learned behavior, then what does this mean for their future, their

ability to continue their education, and their own sense of place in the world?

According to the UN narrative, Maher is a 16­year­old Syrian boy who saw his father for

the last time two years ago. Just before Maher’s family decided to leave Syria, he and his father

were detained and tortured for information. While Maher was released after “just” nine days, his

father was not seen again. Currently in Zarqa, Jordan, with his mother and six siblings, he takes

occasional construction jobs when he can; he cannot work legally in Jordan, especially as he is,

according to the law, a child. His mother is the only caregiver for his siblings who range in age

from 4 to 18. While Maher has to work despite an interest in re­attending school, he can only

work for a few days without feeling intense pain in his shoulder—a daily physical reminder of his

torture (Future of Syria 2013:15). Whether or not this narrative has been fabricated, Maher’s

story is typical: he is one of many children in a fractured family; forced employment renders him

unable to receive an education.

Growing up more quickly is now a fact of life for many Syrian children, regardless of their

current location. On the bright side, according to Elsa Laurin, UNHCR’s Child Protection

Coordinator in Lebanon, “refugee children who flee Syria alone often know where at least one

family member is, and how to contact them. Many are quickly reunited or welcomed into the

homes of other Syrian refugees” (Future of Syria 2013:16). According to the same source, there

are various reasons why children become separated from their parents. Parents may have died

or having become detained, much like Maher’s father, deliberately made the no doubt highly

difficult decision to send their children alone to seek safety or avoid military conscription (Future

of Syria 2013:16).

1.2.2 Psychological Trauma

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Another enormous barrier to children’s access to education in Lebanon is trauma. The

UN writes a description of the effect of trauma on children:

“The conflict in Syria has taken an acute physical and psychological toll on

refugee children. They have witnessed unspeakable horror, which they struggle to forget. Bombs and missiles have destroyed their homes communities and schools. Friends and family members were killed, sometimes before their own eyes” (Future of Syria 2013:21).

A great many children have been diagnosed with trauma and post­traumatic stress disorder

(PTSD). Unfortunately, the statistics for traumatized children are as difficult to come by as

trauma is difficult to measure, and there aren’t nearly enough specialized child psychiatrists

working in Lebanon and Jordan. In fact, according to the UNHCR as of the end of 2013, there

were no child psychiatrists in the entire country of Jordan, and only 30 psychiatrists

country­wide in Lebanon (Future of Syria 2013:25). While physical injuries abound (in Jordan

between 2012­2013, 1,379 children were treated for injuries (Future of Syria 2013:21)), and the

problem of disabled children is growing all the time, very few children have avoided

psychological trauma. Taha, a 15­year­old Syrian boy from Damascus, saw seven corpses lying

outside his home in Damascus one day; he said, “This is impossible to forget. It’s like someone

has stabbed me with a knife when I remember” (Future of Syria 2013:22). Psychological trauma

of this scale is an almost impenetrable barrier to education—especially without counselling.

Even if physically present in school, how is a child supposed to focus after seeing such horrible

scenes?

One of the most telling anecdotes was quoted in the same document. A 16­year­old boy

from Homs, now living in Jordan, had trouble sleeping when he first arrived. He found the

absence of gunfire—which was constantly in the background in Homs—“unsettling” (Future of

Syria 2013:23).

Beyond direct psychiatric assistance, family networks are the best way children can get

support for trauma. Unfortunately, refugee parents much of the time have their own trauma to

deal with, and therefore in many cases, parents of affected children may find it particularly

difficult to support their own children emotionally.

Trauma in particular is very difficult to deal with in conjunction with education. While not

in Lebanon, a IMC/UNICEF assessment in Za’atari camp in Jordan found that 71 percent of 255

adolescents experiencing some form of trauma said one of the ways they coped was

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“withdrawal” from everyday life; family, friends, social lives, and education all take a back seat to

depression and trauma (IMC and UNICEF 2013:10). Again, according to the same source:

“The distress often weakens children’s ability to interact with others. This can

prevent children from wanting to go to school, participate in recreational activities or in extreme cases even leave the house” (IMC and UNICEF 2013:10).

Briefly returning to liminality, this trauma has the potential to permanently affect the

unconscious dispositions of these children. For example, the anthropologist Bjørn Thomassen in

his book The Uses and Meaning of Liminality (2009:51), discusses how the British cultural

anthropologist Victor Turner saw how a liminal state “may become ‘fixed’, referring to a situation

in which the suspended character of social life takes on a more permanent character.” Similarly,

Khosravi (2007:331) mentions the “risk that the illegal migrant, subjected to a gaze and

treatment that divests him or her of humanity, internalises the shame ­ as I did ­ and

understands the lack of travel documents and documentation as personal deficiencies and

inadequacies.” These refugee children are in a liminal state that involves trauma; an

internalization of this state (which includes all traumatic events within the state) could have

devastating effects on their character, not to mention their ability to benefit from any further

education they receive.

Psychological trauma does not directly affect educating these children, but it certainly

affects their ability to learn. Of all the barriers to education for these children, trauma is perhaps

the most difficult to determine and categorize. Perhaps, with the right context, psychological

counseling can be interwoven into education to help support trauma victims. It is possible the

variability of informal education can help with this particular issue, and I will be discussing

Aliim’s approach to trauma further in this dissertation.

1.2.3 Child labor, safety, and recruitment

The final barriers to education are child labor, safety, and the increasing recruitment of

children by armed militant groups in Syria—ISIS included. Many children are kept isolated by

their parents in fear of their safety. This has resulted in claustrophobic situations for children and

has the unintended side effect of stopping any access to educational opportunities. In 2012,

Amnesty International published an article explaining why children were not going to school.

The research was conducted in Lebanon in the Bekaa Valley. None of the families they spoke to

were sending their children to school due to bullying from Lebanese students, fear of violence

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and kidnapping, poor quality of teaching, along with social and physical isolation (Dhala 2012).

Dhala points out another reason why many children were not enrolled in school: they were

working. Child labor in both Lebanon and Jordan is illegal, yet 49 percent of children polled in

2013 were working (Save the Children Jordan and UNICEF 2013). In Lebanon education is

compulsory until age 15, while the minimum legal age of employment is 13 (The Future of Syria

2013:35).

There are likely to be far more children working at this point, given the lack of reporting

on the subject due to its illegality, with both families and employers hiding the problem. They

naturally fear the consequences of being identified, but not only by the local authorities. Parents

quite naturally fear that if humanitarian organizations find out their children are working, their

eligibility for financial assistance will come under question. According to Kilian Kleinschmidt,

who is an aid worker for UNHCR in Jordan, “There are about 680 shops in Za’atari—all of them

employ children” (The Future of Syria 2013:35). One of the interesting things about child labor in

Lebanon and Jordan is that almost all the children working are boys. While only 59 children

were interviewed due to fear of identification, 97 percent were boys (The Future of Syria

2013:36).

Girls are far more likely to be kept inside and isolated by their parents. Culturally

speaking, this is unsurprising, as women and girls in this region are not expected to work

outside the home. However, Syrian refugee girls are working in Lebanon; more than anything

this highlights the desperation of many families in the country. Of the girls found to be working,

only two were available for interview; one girl was working in a vegetable store, and the other as

a hairdressing assistant (The Future of Syria 2013:36). Anecdotal reports by aid workers seem

to suggest that this is common: agriculture and domestic work are the most common areas for

female employment. Eighty percent of Syrian refugee girls were working in these two sectors

(UN Women Inter­Agency Assessment 2013:37).

Child labor supports the basic survival of Syrian refugee families. When leaving Syria,

families often left extremely quickly. This resulted in families only taking what they could carry:

clothes, photos and documents.These people see their lives as frozen; the only assets that

most families now have are those they carried with them across the border, or those they’ve

collected since arriving in Lebanon. Assessments on child labor in Lebanon have concluded that

the primary reason children are working is to directly support their families (UN Women

Inter­Agency Assessment 2013:37).

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Given the situation for Syrian refugee families living in surrounding countries, one can

see why safety for children is such a primary concern and why education becomes secondary.

This year, the rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS, has created new reasons to worry. Given what

has already happened in Iraq and Syria, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand what an

unstable Lebanon would mean for its diverse religious population. If armed militant groups were

able to gain a stable entry point into Lebanon, every single ethnic, religious, and cultural group

in the country (and surrounding countries) would be under threat, and the dynamics of power

would completely change. So much so, that survival, not education, would return as the highest

priority for these refugees. The border areas of Jordan and Lebanon are particularly volatile,

given their proximity to Syria. Armed groups have cells in most surrounding countries, especially

near the border. Aid workers in 2013 were noticing refugee children, mostly boys from more

fractured families, returning to Syria in order to join armed groups and fight. Islamic State did not

exist two years ago, but since their rise to power in Iraq and Syria, many children are being

recruited by the organization (Glum 2015). According to the Lebanese newspaper, The Daily

Star, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented at least 400 children that have

been recruited by ISIS:

“The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the children, all aged under 18, were recruited near schools, mosques and in public areas where ISIS carries out killings and brutal punishments on local people” (Reuters 2015).

Given these significant barriers to education, it is not surprising that there is an

educational crisis in Lebanon for refugee children. While Syrian refugees are the most affected,

Lebanese children have also started to feel the pressures of a struggling system. In the next

section I will take an in­depth look at what Lebanon’s Ministry of Education, in conjunction with

aid organizations, NGOs, the United Nations, and other neighboring and western governments,

is doing to fix the educational crisis.

1.3 The State of Education in Lebanon

Lebanon’s educational system is dominated by privately financed education. In other

words, Lebanese children mostly attend private schools. Only around 20 percent of Lebanese

children attend public schools (Watkins 2013). Before the Syrian civil war started, the

educational system in Lebanon was of a high quality, especially so for the region. In fact,

Lebanon scored very high marks for educational quality and performance in a World Economic

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Forum survey that took place before the crisis started (Watkins 2013). School­life expectancy

was 14 years, and the net enrolment rates at the primary and secondary levels were

respectively 87 percent and 66 percent. Again, those are very good levels when compared to

the rest of the region.

However, the fundamental differences in performance and funding between private and

public education in Lebanon are stark. Public spending on education is just 1.7 percent of GDP,

strikingly low by international standards. This is reflected in public and private students’ test

scores: success rates on the national Brevet exams are respectively 74 percent and 55 percent

for private school students and public school students (Watkins 2013). In addition, only 4

percent of public school teachers hold a specialized degree (Watkins 2013).

Before the refugee crisis, this was a problem—five years later it is still a problem, but a

problem with double the amount of children affected. The bottom line is that registered refugees

in Lebanon, the vast majority of whom cannot afford private education, are now depending on

an underfunded public education system which was only designed to handle 20 percent of

Lebanese children before the war. Because Lebanon’s population has essentially doubled in the

last 4 years, the public school system that was never designed for many children in the first

place now has almost a million more children to educate.

In addition, Syrian refugee children have cultural and linguistic barriers to overcome.

Most Syrian children are Sunni Muslim, while until recently Lebanon was evenly divided

between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Syrians primarily speak Arabic, while in Lebanon, Lebanese

Arabic, French and English are widely spoken. For displaced children, in many instances,

attending classes in Lebanon means learning in a language they do not speak, like French or

sometimes English. To be more specific, while the Syrian educational system provides primary

and lower secondary instruction solely in Arabic, Lebanon introduces lessons in French and

English at the primary level. For these children who have been displaced, traumatized, and in

many cases missed over a year of school, this barrier is considerable; it is not surprising then

that Syrian refugees have very high drop­out rates.

Considering the state of Lebanese education before the crisis, it is not surprising that

refugee children are finding it difficult to adjust. Their future lies in the hands of a country that is

completely overwhelmed. A survey carried out in 2013 by the AMEL Association, a Lebanese

NGO, found that certain reinforcing barriers to education were consistent across all Syrian

refugee children. According to the survey, many children were not able to access education at

all due to financial constraints (48 percent) and access issues (16 percent). For the children who

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were able to access education, linguistic issues (35 percent), difficulties with the Lebanese

curriculum (22 percent), and difficulties adapting (18 percent) were among the most significant

(Watkins 2013).

As it stands now, Lebanon’s public school system is unable to cope with the amount of

children needing an education. As of last year, the public schools were catering to just about

300,000 children. According to a World Bank Assessment at the end of 2013, the MEHE

(Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education) is only equipped to deal with another

90,000 children by the end of 2014 (SRRP 2014:32). This is a fraction of how many children

need educational support: as of the end of 2014 there were 500,000 Syrian children who were

not able to access education in Lebanon (SRRP 2014:32); as of July 2015 the number has gone

up to roughly 750,000 children (LCRP 2014).

1.3.1 The Plan

In order to be prepared for the impending crisis, the government of Lebanon, in

conjunction with the United Nations, has produced a document entitled the “Lebanon Crisis

Response Plan 2015­2016” (LCRP). This was released in December of 2014, and is one of the

most recent documents produced for this context. They have created what they call a roadmap

“from vulnerability to stabilization” (LCRP 2014). The LCRP intends to “integrate a targeted

humanitarian response into a broader plan to support Lebanon’s stabilization” (LCRP 2014).

According to the document, “the LCRP represents the contributions and plans of 77

organizations including line ministries and international and national response partners, based

on consultation with civil institutions” (LCRP 2014).

In the LCRP, the groups involved have produced a dollar amount for the funding

required in order to bring stability to Lebanon: $2.14 billion dollars, which allocates $724 million

exclusively for stabilization programs, and $1.9 billion “requested as new funding” (LCRP 2014).

Of this amount, they have suggested a budget of $263.6 million specifically for education over

the next year. As mentioned earlier, there are roughly 750,000 children who are in need of an

education. However, the $263.6 million is openly acknowledged in the document to only target

377,000 of those 750,000 children. Considering the present political situation in Lebanon, the

previously mentioned barriers to education, the recent riots over the lack of public services, and

the cultural, economic, and religious divisions thrust into public consciousness as a result of the

refugee crisis, this is not enough money.

14

In fact, considering these stunning challenges, this document is completely unrealistic:

public education in Lebanon is so ill­equipped to handle the sheer amount of displaced and

undereducated children, that short of a massive development intervention, it is clear these goals

cannot be reached. For example, Lebanon’s previous No Lost Generation strategy that was

launched in 2013 failed to tackle the problem due to donor funding failing to match the needs

and urgency of the campaign (Mayer 2015:7). Simply put, despite the best intentions of the

government of Lebanon, the United Nations, and the myriad NGOs working inside Lebanon on

behalf of children’s education, the needs of this many refugee children far outstrip the provision

of all these organizations, let alone individual groups or governments or NGOs. Kevin Watkins

(2013) puts it succinctly:

“For understandable reasons, the international community has seen the crisis in

Lebanon as a ‘refugee problem.’ It is now impossible to avoid the conclusion that the country is dealing not with a short term refugee emergency, but a long term development challenge.”

There are still ways to make sure as many children as possible are educated. Despite

Lebanon’s inability to educate all of the children in need, informal education has already helped

ensure, at least in a small way, that more children are receiving an education, albeit informally.

While conducting research for this dissertation, I have been volunteering for Aliim Smartphone

Schools, an NGO that hopes to provide a mobile education platform in the form of a smartphone

application to Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. In the next section, I will share my experience

working with Aliim and why I believe many of these children will benefit from Aliim’s original

approach to informal education.

2.1 Aliim Smartphone Schools

I have been volunteering for Aliim Smartphone Schools since May 2015 by offering

advice from my own educational and technological experience. I worked in education previously

and have experience with mobile technology, so I have filled a niche consulting role for the

organization. I initially reached out to Aliim in order to gain experience that would add depth to

this dissertation. While I will discuss working for Aliim in more detail later in this section, I

wanted to first mention my role with them, in order to provide personal context throughout the

section. In addition, it is worth mentioning that much of the information in this section is taken

15

from an interview I conducted with the founder and CEO Janae Bushman on August 30, 2015.

Finally, in order to help Aliim I was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement, which means

that I am neither able to speak in great detail about the mobile application, nor the curriculum.

Aliim Smartphone Schools is the official name for a new educational nonprofit that aims

to provide informal education to Syrian refugee children currently living in Lebanon. It aims to

educate through a mobile application which is provided for free to those students within the

program. Aliim’s founder, an American named Janae Bushman, decided to start Aliim after an

industry conference and an internship at UNESCO, where she realized the scale and extent of

the educational crisis in Lebanon and the rest of the region. While more true now than ever, at

the time there was such an educational shortage that refugee host­country governments, local

NGOs, and international organizations were desperately looking outside Lebanon’s formal

educational system for scalable, high­quality alternatives. Within Lebanon, given their reliance

on private education for most students, this need for alternatives has dramatically increased

since the Syrian civil war started.

There are several existing informal education programs for Syrian refugees, but none so

far are capable of addressing the scale required to effectively provide quality education for a

million refugee children in Lebanon, let alone almost double that number if one includes the

other neighboring refugee host countries. While there are other mobile educational programs,

none have curriculums that address the specific needs of youth affected by conflict. The needs

that Aliim hopes to address include, but are not limited to:

“psychosocial support, [real­time] updates about resources and safety issues,

access to mentors, the ability to learn in safe spaces, and learning activities that prepare them to participate in the local community both economically and socially.”

1

Due to the barriers to education in Lebanon, Aliim hopes to fill the gaps that formal

education cannot provide. Aliim is set apart from other educational programs, mobile included,

largely due to the curriculum and general framework of the program. The program is designed

to be contextualized to fit the dramatically different conflict situations around the world; while

Syrian refugee children are uniquely situated, the issues they face in a context of conflict,

displacement, and trauma are shared by children in other global refugee situations. Hopefully,

upon demonstrating a successful pilot program in Lebanon, Aliim can be expanded to other

1 Janae Bushman, interview by author, August 30, 2015, transcript.

16

Middle Eastern host­countries, and eventually anywhere there are children who need a localized

and contextually relevant education. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all

children are entitled to an education. Aliim’s curriculum is structured around this belief: in fact,

the curriculum will attempt to ingrain human­rights issues seamlessly into the framework,

showing the children participating that the rest of the world values their education, and that they

have a right to it.

2.2 Program Goals within a Crisis Affected Environment To have a better understanding of Aliim as an organization, it seems prudent to explain

its goals and how they are to be achieved in the Lebanese educational context. Bushman hopes

to:

“create a program that helps change the way aid workers and policy makers approach refugee education in conflict­affected countries,” and “ultimately improves the lives of some of the most vulnerable people on earth.”

2

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Aliim’s program is providing local context. In the

previous section I explained the barriers to education in Lebanon as a result of the conflict.

Aliim’s educational program is attempting to reach children based on the assumption that they

have already been affected by the conflict. In other words, the curriculum is designed around

the barriers to education, so the program can operate despite these barriers that already affect

formal education. Including the context of the conflict within the lessons, and with Aliim’s

program being mobile, these inherent aspects of the program should hopefully allow more

children to participate.

In 2013, USAID released a report entitled Using Technology to Deliver Educational

Services to Children and Youth in Environments Affected by Crisis and/or Conflict, in which the

organization suggests that:

“students in CAFE [Conflict­affected and fragile environments] are more than

three times as likely to attend school on a [sic] irregular basis as those in other developing countries, more than twice as likely to be under­nourished, twice as likely to have a sibling die before age 5, and more than twice as likely to lack clean water” (USAID 2013:3).

2 Janae Bushman, interview by author, August 30, 2015, transcript.

17

All together, these aspects have a strikingly negative affect on learning: cognitive, physical, and

psychosocial well­being are all dramatically affected by living in a conflict setting.

While many of these negative aspects exist for students already within formal Lebanese

education, Aliim presents a few benefits. First, Aliim’s curriculum is being designed around the

local context. According to Bushman, “If you have a mobile program such as Smartphone

Schools that is not trying to substitute the classroom experience but provide an educational

experience for those who cannot attend a physical school, you can realistically fill a void with a

solution that makes sense for the context and the needs of the people.” Instead of trying to fit 3

an educational program into a classroom format that is already unsuccessful in meeting the

educational needs of so many non­Lebanese students, Aliim’s structure is built taking the local

educational context into account. For example, unless it is an English lesson, Arabic will be

language of instruction.

Second, Aliim plans to address the need for psychosocial support directly, by recruiting

program mentors. During the interview, I asked Bushman what types of people and support are

needed in order to accelerate success with Aliim. She responded with:

“We will need financial support to develop out the app fully, access to a network

of Syrian professionals across the globe to recruit program mentors, and the support of local community leaders to help inform potential students and their parents about our program.”

4

While Aliim has not yet launched its pilot program, access to psychosocial support will be a

critical aspect of Smartphone Schools. Professional networks are also in place that will facilitate

the recruitment of Syrian mentors. Also, by virtue of its inherent mobility, it avoids another

potential problem: poor teachers. I mentioned previously that only 4 percent of Lebanese public

school teachers hold a specialized teaching degree. In addition, USAID’s research report

discovered that:

“Teachers are directly affected by conflicts and crises….their own education and

professional development may have been disrupted, resulting in low levels of content knowledge and teaching skills. More seriously, they may be directly targeted during conflict and require psychosocial support themselves” (USAID 2013:3).

3 Janae Bushman, interview by author, August 30, 2015, transcript. 4 Janae Bushman, interview by author, August 30, 2015, transcript.

18

Finally, because the Smartphone Schools program is a mobile application, it cuts

through other barriers to education like lack of transportation, educational resources, and

money. Most importantly, Lebanon is a perfect location for a pilot due to it having one of the

lowest school enrollment rates in the region and one of the highest rates of refugees living in

urban areas with access to 3G and 4G mobile service, as well as very high mobile phone

penetration (~75­90% (CIA World Factbook 2014)). Watkins (2013) mentions these barriers:

“Many children were unable to access the Lebanese education system, due to

financial constraints (48 percent) or access issues (16 percent). Where they were able to access education, children face linguistic issues (35 percent), difficulties with the Lebanese curriculum (22 percent) and difficulties adapting (18 percent), amongst others.”

It is important to acknowledge that Smartphone Schools has not yet launched, and

therefore it is easy to be optimistic. However, the program has the advantage of starting from

scratch. In designing a program and curriculum that acknowledges and therefore avoids these

barriers, thus rendering them immaterial, you potentially have something that is cost­effective,

scalable, and contextually relevant with psychosocial support. To quote Bushman, “If you have

a mobile program that is not trying to substitute the classroom experience, but provide an

educational experience for those that cannot attend a physical school, you can realistically fill a

void with solutions that makes sense for the context and the needs of the people.” Aliim’s 5

Smartphone Schools program seems to recognize that learning is not something done to

students, but rather something students can do themselves with adequate support.

2.3 Experience and Perception

My experience working for Aliim has not been what I expected. At first, I did not realize

they were still in the design phase. While unexpected, joining Aliim in this stage has provided

me with more experience and responsibility than I had initially expected. In addition to

conducting research, I undertook a consulting role in which I have been assisting Bushman and

others design the core curriculum for the program. While I will not mention their names as I have

not received their permission, the only other two people involved that I have contact with are a

5 Janae Bushman, interview by author, August 30, 2015, transcript.

19

man who works with the Ministry of Education for an African country, and a German PhD

student who is studying human rights. Every few weeks we have Skype meetings, during which

we discuss ideas and delegate responsibilities for drafting various aspects of the curriculum.

In the previous section of this paper, I suggest that education itself influences and molds

its beneficiaries. Unfortunately the conflict itself is already at work doing just this. In his book,

The Construction of Reality in the Child, Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget

describes constructivism in education as a process of accommodation and assimilation; learners

assimilate new experiences into the existing framework of their world, and accommodation

takes place simultaneously by readjusting their current framework to fit new experiences (Piaget

1954). With this in mind, if a child’s “framework” of the world has been created amidst conflict,

violence, and trauma, it will permanently affect their perception of themselves, other people and

the world in general. Having meaningful, context­specific education available should do much to

counter this destructive process.

In countries that are affected by crisis and conflict, students are more at risk of having

their education used as a tool of manipulation. As an example, USAID uses language of

instruction to show how education can be undermined:

“Students displaced by conflict and/or crisis may find themselves caught between

differing language policies and curricula. In non­conflict countries, educational technology programs typically aim to align with the official language of instruction and official curriculum; where either or both of these elements are linked to the conflict itself, educational technology programs risk being undermined” (USAID 2013:4).

While these are valid concerns, the Smartphone Schools program lasts only nine

months, and therefore I don’t think Aliim poses any sort of threat. The short length is due to it

being a pilot program. If Aliim can demonstrate success after the pilot program, a curriculum will

be developed for a longer time period. According to Bushman, the program promotes skills to

students in a way “that enables themselves to become resilient in a conflict­affected context,

increase their ability to attain higher paying jobs, contribute positively to their local community,

and most importantly, continue their education in a formal setting.” The point is that regardless 6

of how successful Aliim becomes, the ultimate goal of the program is to help students get to a

point where they can continue their formal education, and hopefully allow them to feel more at

home in a country that is inherently transitory.

6 Janae Bushman, interview by author, August 30, 2015, transcript.

20

The other concerns about Aliim Smartphone Schools are almost exclusively

technological. Regardless of the curriculum’s robustness or quality, is it possible for a mobile

educational program to provide quality education for a very large number of possibly

traumatized and displaced children, living in limbo in a transitory country? The fact is that most

Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) programs have failed in

the past, so why should Aliim Smartphone Schools be any different? In the next section I will

provide the history of ICT4D, and how the past successes and failures of ICT for education can

be used by Aliim in order to create the best possible educational program.

3.1 Information and Communication Technology for Development

ICT4D means information and communication technology for development. Discussing

ICT4D, therefore, is really a discussion about development. The intent of ICT4D is development,

which means various things to different people. The context of development itself is highly

flexible in that it changes based on the contemporary relationships between rich and poor, but

the most commonly used definition of development deals with the concepts of ‘progress’ and

‘growth.’

This notion of development is largely thought to have started during the European

Enlightenment which took place during the 18th century (Unwin 2009:7). According to economic

development expert Jeffrey Sachs in his book The End of Poverty (2005), this translates in the

21st century to suggestions that “we can use rational argument and our technological skills to

end absolute poverty.” These arguments say that science and technology, the economy, and

politics can be merged together in order to facilitate the end of poverty and to make the world a

better place.

If at first glance these visions seem utopian, it’s because they are very much idealistic

notions. The thinkers of the Enlightenment like Jefferson, Smith, Kant, and Condorcet

underscored the idea that rationality is the basis for knowledge and ethics, that empirical

experimentation should be the core of scientific enquiry, and that the combination of these all

serve to push progress away from the “darkness, superstition, and irrationality” of the medieval

era (Unwin 2009:8). These idealistic foundations of development are not without criticism, yet

they do mirror in some respects the foundation of the idea that ICTs can be used to facilitate

development.

21

European notions of development are consistently about progress and growth towards a

better and greater good, whether this falls within an economic, social, or political context.

Therefore within any of those contexts, ICT4D can be interpreted as using ICTs as a means to

provide those benefits. In fact, using ICTs this way isn’t a new concept, at least in the sense that

the use of technology and science to facilitate development has been around since at least the

17th century with examples such as the industrial revolution of the 19th century, or the ‘green’

revolution of the 1960s.

Critics of development discourse frequently point out that the idea of “progress” is

economic progress. In other words, it is no coincidence that ICT4D emerged as a specific field

at a time when according to Tim Unwin (2009), the UNESCO chair in ICT4D, “the dominant

mode of development discourse was associated with notions of economic growth and liberal

democracy.” Unwin (1997) uses the example of Walt Rostow, who was an American economist

during the 1960s. Rostow’s model of the stages of economic growth significantly influenced the

strategy of development planning in the world’s poorest countries. While heavily criticized by

left­wing academics, Rostow’s model stressed the importance of technology. Unwin (2009)

elaborates on this thought process:

“Improved technologies and transport were seen as being crucial preconditions

for take­off; the take­off stage itself was characterized by rapid economic growth, the development of more sophisticated technology, and investment especially in the manufacturing sector and the drive to maturity again featured considerable advancements in technology, as economies became more diversified, with increased emphasis on consumer goods and services taking place in the final age of high mass consumption.”

Forty years later, similar parallels between technology and economic growth are represented in

discussions about the use and scale of ICTs for development.

The dominance of economics as the best method of growth is unsurprising, at least

considering the attitudes of Europe and the USA from the 1960s to the present. From the late

70s to the early 90s, politicians like Thatcher and Reagan spearheaded free­market ideology as

policy. This led to the eventual ‘export’ of neoliberal, free­market policies and concepts around

the world. Since these policies arguably work well within the economies of the first world, to infer

they would also work in less wealthy countries was not a stretch the imagination. With market

deregulation and reductions in state intervention seen as an economic growth engine during the

22

latter decades of the 20th century in Europe and America, shouldn’t those policies also work in

the world’s poorer countries?

These arguments not only were deliberately exported to the poorer countries of the

world, but institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, seeing the success of these new

policies, enthusiastically adopted them for their own use. This new attitude was turned into

policy in response to the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. This was a situation where

many Latin American countries, but specifically Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, hit a point where

their foreign debt exceeded the amount earned, and were unable to repay those loans.

The Latin American debt crisis was just one situation which set up the conditions for an

“increasingly hegemonic approach by international donors and financial institutions,” where the

belief that poverty elimination through economic growth is the role of development (Unwin

2009:14). Then, it comes as no surprise that the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs) that began in 2000 focused on poverty elimination. The MDGs also brought back into

use the idea of ICTs as a method of poverty elimination through what the UN called

“partnerships” with the private sector. Thus, MDG number 8, target 18, aims to: “In cooperation

with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information

and communication technologies” (UN Millennium Project 2002­2006).

A bit earlier in the 1990s, the various practices and interpretations of development

started to intersect with discussions about “globalization.” According to economist Samir Amin,

in his book Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (1997), by the end of the decade the concept

of globalization was widespread and had become a common fixture of popular language. Very

rapidly, an understanding of globalization became important enough to merit a new academic

growth industry. In addition, ICT4D became wrapped up in this new industry and rhetoric.

Consequently, in order to analyze ICT4D, an agreed­upon understanding of globalization

is necessary. Unwin (2009:15) separates globalization into three categories: economic, social,

and cultural. The economic characteristics include:

“a rapid increase in international trade, the integration of the global financial

systems, changing systems of industrial production involving increasing amounts of outsourcing, increasingly global patterns of consumption, and an increasing complexity of global economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization.”

Unsurprisingly, many of these characteristics are directly reflected in the social characteristics of

globalization, which are often represented as ICTs. The social representations of globalization

23

are characterized by “increased migration and travel, new means of social communication such

as instant messaging and mobile telephony, and by increasingly complex patterns of human

relationships across the world” (Unwin 2009:15). More recent social ICTs have continued this

process: informal education, video messaging services such as Skype, and direct

person­to­person remittances utilizing digital currencies and mobile financial services all

contribute to a more globalized and interconnected planet.

While ICTs are widely discussed and consistently play an ever larger role in our modern

society, globalization and its supporting ICTs have not entered a new relationship. In other

words, globalization is an ancient process. Those in positions of power have always recognized

the importance of information and communication and have consistently developed

technologies that ensure their access to it and control over it. As an example, this has been

represented by Michel Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon in his Discipline and Punish (1975).

Foucault’s Panopticon as metaphor refers to an ideal representation of modern disciplinary

power, in which permanent visibility is represented through most hierarchical structures as a

form of power. Despite their beneficial use in development and elsewhere, ICTs can take this

form, represented through examples like CCTV, ISPs tracking user behavior on the Internet,

and most forms of modern government surveillance.

While ICTs have always had a relationship with power, they are also fundamentally

interwoven with concepts of space and time. For example, the invention of writing and later on,

books, created the option for oral history to be recorded and stored in new ways and potentially

for long periods of time. Much closer to the present, ICTs became critical to the speed at which

people accumulated capital; they coincided and helped facilitate a shift towards capitalism.

“While historically canals, railways, and aeroplanes have all helped to bring

people and processes closer together, thereby accelerating the potential for the accumulation of capital, the introduction of new ICTs in the last two decades of the 20th century has played an even more dramatic role in restructuring the potential for even faster accumulation, and with it the social and cultural structures necessary to maintain it” (Unwin 2009:17).

While the concepts might not be new, what is unprecedented is the scale at which information

can now be communicated: instantaneously across the entire planet.

Unfortunately, there are inherent challenges to using ICTs for development. Specifically,

these challenges revolve around the relationship between knowledge and power. Thomas

24

Davenport and Lawrence Prusak in their (1998) book, Working Knowledge: How organizations

manage what they know, define knowledge as:

“Information that has been incorporated into human understanding based on

experience and context. Put another way, information becomes knowledge when it is combined with experience, context, interpretation and reflection so that it can be applied to actions based upon human decision­making.”

Thus today, there is considerable discourse surrounding “knowledge societies,” and the

importance of knowledge sharing. UNESCO, for example, is quite assertive in its emphasis that

“nobody should be excluded from knowledge societies, where knowledge is a public good,

available to each and every individual” (UNESCO 2005:18).

Can ICT4D speed this along? Possibly. But the problems arise not from goals of

egalitarian knowledge­sharing, but from situations where information and knowledge are

commoditized and strategically withheld so that those in positions of power are able to maintain

their influence. Unwin (2009:22) discusses this challenge:

“There is thus a fundamental challenge in seeking to use ICTs for development,

since they can both enable greater global control and profit generation, while also providing the opportunity for the kinds of global knowledge­sharing communities that people in organizations such as UNESCO wish to see.”

Unfortunately for those that advocate their use, frequently in today’s world ICTs are

enabling the increased commodification of knowledge. Despite this, a clear understanding of the

relationships of power between creators of information and users is critical if we want to use

ICT4D effectively. If you define development as economic growth, then there isn’t much doubt

that ICTs can contribute in a positive way. However, my research has revolved around

determining whether ICT4D can be used in an effective way in education, specifically, to help

transform the education of an enormous group of marginalized and largely traumatized children

and teens. Can ICTs be used to help these youths, despite global interests seeking to maintain

competitive advantages, while donor interest in funding Syrian war relief has plummeted? For

the moment it is important to be realistic when answering this question by acknowledging the

many past failures, and far fewer successes, that ICTs have had in making a difference to poor

and marginalized students (Heeks 2002). Part of the problem lies in the distinction between

IT/ICT and ICT4D. The distinction is critical because it explains the goal of ICT4D. Unwin

elaborates:

25

“Unlike IT and ICT, where the main focus is on what is and what can be

achieved, ICT4D is about what should be done and how we should do it. ICT4D therefore has a profoundly moral agenda. It is not primarily about the technologies themselves, but is instead concerned with how they can be used to enable the empowerment of poor and marginalized communities” (Unwin 2009:33).

Within the context of this paper, this quote is particularly relevant. The educational

situation for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and surrounding countries has become critical enough

that any helpful solution to the problem will go a long way. However, as I have shown earlier in

this essay, creating ICT4D­based solutions is fraught with inherent challenges given the context.

In the next section, I will look at examples of past successes and failures of ICT for education

and how that knowledge can be most effectively used by Aliim Smartphone Schools to create

an effective mobile educational application.

3.2 ICT in Education: Applying What We’ve Learned

First, it is crucial to mention that Aliim Smartphone Schools is a unique program; nothing

on this scale has been attempted before. To date, large­scale implementation of

mobile­phone­based educational technology in countries affected by crisis and conflict has not

occurred, so the concept remains unproven. Fortunately there are case studies of

mobile­phone­based educational technology used in non­conflict affected countries. The case

studies I will mention are from India and Haiti. It is important to emphasize that technologies are

constantly evolving and continue to do so exponentially. Because of this, it seems logical that

the latest technology is the best indication of where educational technology is heading in the

future; that fact, and the similarity to Aliim’s program, is the reason why I have chosen case

studies that use mobile technology.

The programs in these two countries have had both encouraging results and unexpected

setbacks. The India BridgeIT program began in 2011 and finished in 2014 after having run for

three consecutive years in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Involved were 160

teachers, 86 urban, semi­urban, and rural schools, 4,800 students, and 17 control schools

which did not receive the program. The main program goal was improved student learning of the

fifth and sixth grade English and science curriculum. The curriculum content included a

cloud­based catalogue of around 400 educational videos, 90­100 videos for each grade and

subject, broadcast via a 2G mobile phone onto a TV monitor or projector (USAID 2013:10).

26

The results were distinctively positive: “The program had a strong, positive, and

statistically significant effect on student learning for both Science and English,” and compared to

control schools the students in the BridgeIT program were on average 8 and 15 percentage

points ahead in English and Science respectively (USAID 2013:10). The success was

suggested to be a result of the quality of the contextually local educational content in

conjunction with the English language videos compensating for teachers’ poor English

pronunciation skills.

This program is only similar to Aliim in the sense that Aliim’s curriculum is also designed

with consideration to the local context. Curriculum relevance is not just an ICT­based concept. It

has roots in education in general, and relevant local context has so far been the most significant

consideration when drafting Aliim’s curriculum. In L.S. Jeevanantham’s (1998:217­218) book

Curriculum Content: A Quest for Relevance, he argues against:

“the irrelevance of curricula that ‘are rooted in the experiences of the dominant

class and so exclude the cultural practices of the dominated group,’” and that by “maintaining such curricula, we are reinforcing and creating anew, repressive conditions that produce and reproduce silence among the vast majority of humanity.’”

I agree that curricula such as this would be culturally imperialistic and technology determinist. I

feel that Aliim avoids this categorization for two reasons: first, the mentors involved will be

Syrian or Lebanese themselves, or at the very least culturally and linguistically relatable.

Second, Aliim’s curriculum is designed specifically to fit the needs of Syrian refugee children, by

people from vastly different cultural contexts, all with their own personal and professional

experience in education.

Next I will briefly discuss a mobile educational program in Haiti which is different to Aliim

in that it targets teachers, not students. However Haiti is prone to crisis and conflict due to

natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes in addition to social unrest, poverty, and very

poor infrastructure. This program launched in 2012, involved 220 teachers from 32 rural, public

and private schools, and reached approximately 13,000 students. The technology included

Nokia smartphones with pre­loaded curricula, a mini­projector, and a solar­powered battery

charger. The content was similar to the BridgeIT program in India, in that the content was

linguistically (Creole) and culturally contextualized video lessons. This project has not yet

released any quantitative results, however I use this example to highlight weaknesses in the

program. The serious weaknesses include “teacher motivation (there are no incentives to

27

participate in the program), apprehension of the technology on the part of the school principals

and teachers, and poorly functioning technology (linked to mobile phone connectivity and some

software issues)” (USAID 2013:16).

I believe Aliim avoids this problem, as their program is designed to be student­motivated.

In addition, mobile phone connectivity is not currently an issue in Lebanon, as communication

infrastructure within the country remains stable at least for the time­being. Other mobile­based

educational programs have had various issues, but Aliim’s advantage is their program is

designed to avoid these problems by providing a program which is contextually­relevant,

interactive, and stable. Issues will inevitably arise, but with adequate recognition of

potentialities, I believe Aliim will be able to handle most situations efficiently and judiciously.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, the only way the Syrian Civil War will come to a conclusion is through a

political solution. That solution, however, seems to be more distant than ever. With no end in

sight, the focus must be on the people who have been affected the most— the refugees. The

continued education of almost a million children in the countries surrounding Syria should take

precedence. As I have argued, the Lebanese educational system has so far failed to support the

increased number of children due to the inherent structural imbalance between public and

private education, donor weariness, and lack of resources. Indeed, this problem is compounded

by barriers to education like trauma and broken families, which are difficult to measure and even

more difficult to fix. Yet as I have discussed, informal education can be a partial solution to the

education problem in Lebanon. By acknowledging the barriers to education and working around

them, programs like Aliim’s Smartphone Schools can be used to get more children learning

again; these children see education as a way out, and at least informal educational programs

offer hope and some stability. Aliim’s program is scaleable, and more importantly created

specifically for this context of conflict. As I have argued, with the failure of traditional education

in this setting, the only way forward is the use of alternative means of education. I believe the

best way to avoid an entire generation of lost, uneducated children, who may be vulnerable to

negative influences, is with creative, novel solutions. Literally putting education back in the

hands of those who want it the most seems like the best possible approach.

28

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