this is the result of having dictators in the Arab world supported by the US.the US sell them billions of dollars worth of Arms each year arms they will probably not use. instead of talking about democracy the US should talk to these made in the US leaders about Education.democracy will come after Education it will be achieved by the people of the area not inforced by the US.at one time in Egypt in the fifties and sixties over 500 schools were built every year.at that time they have a national leader who was thinking about Education and about improving the life of his people. now they have these so called leaders whose interest is staying in Power thanks to the US for that.

Many of their geography text books print ficticious maps of the Middle East by not including Israel, a strange fact since their history lessons are full of false facts about that same country that doesn't exist in the geography class.Teaching the truth would be a good place to start.

I think we as Arabs must stop reminding ourselves of the old glory days of the great Arab thinkers and conquerors but rather look ahead and be productive - improve our labor force in both agriculture and manufacturing areas, for example. New generations and parents will then take notice. In school and at home, our educators (teachers and parents) would always remind us on how glorious was our past civilization, and the reason we are what we are today is because other civilizations "stole" our ideas. True or not. Moreover, I believe that today we either hate Western cultures so much or love them so much, and hence we learn in order to either live in a Western world or fight it. Instead, we should be passionate for education in order to help our OWN Arab society. I think we are too distracted with foreign cultures that we tend to forget that we someday can become great Arab thinkers, but only if we think about ourselves as a competitive Arab community. Maybe if we didn't have "lazy" oil, we could have forced ourselves to move our butts and start innovating just like those great Arab thinkers did in the past.