Kuwait’s Ministry of Education keeps a history page that contains one startling line: in the middle of the twentieth century, illiteracy in Kuwaiti society was estimated at more than 85 to 90 per cent. Reading was the exception, not the rule, in a place whose trade ran on ledgers, letters and promissory notes.
The first move was not the state’s. The ministry credits the Islamic Guidance Society with founding Al Madrasa Al Ahliya — adults were being taught before there was a government programme to teach them.
Then the state arrived, and its own table records what happened. In the 1957-58 academic year there were four adult-education centres with 430 students. In 1958-59: eight centres, 2,429 students. In 1959-60: sixteen centres, 3,187. In 1960-61: nineteen centres and 4,957 students.
The interesting part is the gap between the two columns. The number of centres grew a little under fivefold in four years; the number of people sitting in them grew elevenfold. A centre that opened with roughly a hundred students was carrying close to 260 by the end — a strain on teachers rather than on buildings.
The same years brought institutes for people who had been outside school altogether: the Al Noor Institute for the blind in 1955-56, the Al Amal Institute, founded in 1959-60 for pupils the ministry’s own table calls deaf and mute, and an institute of special education for boys and girls in 1960-61. The expansion was not only in how many seats existed, but in who was counted as deserving one.
Photograph: a Ministry of Education card produced by Kuwait One.
Source: Ministry of Education, history of education page.
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