In the field of education we are witnessing profound shifts in the relationship between generations and reading — the road to knowledge. There appears to be an almost directly proportional relationship between the advance of technology and the decline of traditional reading. This observation is not unique to the Arab world.
Most advanced nations today complain of declining deep reading among young people, yet the problem appears more acute in our Arab region, and is more visibly pronounced among certain segments of Gulf students.
The student who once spent hours in the library now makes do with a small screen carried in his pocket, and the book that once required days of reading and review now reads itself.
Arab education over recent decades has followed a gradual path of knowledge reduction: it began with dependence on study summaries, then moved to summaries of those summaries, until it has now reached a new stage of near-total reliance on artificial intelligence tools.
The student has become capable of writing lengthy reports, preparing presentations, and even formulating research papers that appear coherent — without passing through the mental process that once represented the very essence of learning.
Knowledge is the capacity to understand, connect, analyse, critique, and compare. These skills are not normally formed through ready-made answers, but through reading, reflection, doubt, and inquiry. A machine can deliver information, but it cannot grant a person the mental experience generated by the journey of research itself.
The Gulf paradox deserves special attention. For more than half a century, the Gulf Cooperation Council states have invested enormous sums in education, established modern universities and colleges, and sent large numbers of their citizens abroad to study. Yet some estimates suggest that spending on education does not necessarily equate to building a reading society. We no longer suffer from illiteracy of letters, but from illiteracy of knowledge. A student can access any piece of information within seconds.
Yet he struggles to read a complete book, follow a lengthy intellectual argument, or distinguish between opinion and fact. We have largely succeeded in teaching the alphabet, but we have not succeeded to the same degree in instilling the habit of free reading and love of knowledge for its own sake. It is notable that a growing number of countries have begun cautiously reviewing their earlier rush toward full digitalisation in education. Some educational systems have moved to limit the use of digital devices inside classrooms.
They have restored the status of the printed book and handwriting, after educational studies confirmed that handwritten note-taking aids comprehension and retention better than complete dependence on keyboards and screens. At the same time, other countries have begun enacting legislation restricting minors' access to social media platforms.
They are imposing greater legal responsibilities on technology companies, along with heavy fines. The reason is not hostility toward technology, but a growing recognition that excessive use leaves negative effects on concentration, mental health, and academic achievement.
The paradox is that in the Arab world — of which the Gulf is a part — we have not yet taken comparable steps to a sufficient degree, even though the harm among us may be greater. Ours are societies in which the habit of reading has not historically taken root with the same depth seen in some industrialised societies. The rapid transition from the book to the screen, and from the library to the mobile phone, took place before the process of building a reading culture had even been completed — and here the difference between alphabetic illiteracy and cognitive illiteracy becomes clear.
The first means the inability to read words; the second means the inability to understand the world despite the ability to read. The first can be remedied with a school, a teacher, and a book; the second requires an entire culture that encourages inquiry, debate, and independent thinking.
When a student grows accustomed to having a machine do the research, summarising, and writing on his behalf, he loses the most important thing a university is supposed to give him: the capacity for independent thought. We have relatively prevailed over illiteracy of letters, but we have not yet prevailed over illiteracy of minds.