Extremely proud to be Jordanian

I've never been so proud of Jordan before. Today the Minister of Education, Dr. Khaled Touqan, alongside with the head of Fighting Corruption department from the Jordanian Central Intelligence agency, they both have announced that the Tawjihi exams were stolen and sold in the market. Upon this discovery, the minister of Education has cancelled the exams taken so far, and announced that new exams will be created and given starting in one week.

This is truly great. For years, stealing exam questions has been a continuous habit. Private schools have made profit by giving these questions to their students to increase the school's average score. But this time, this year this Minister of Education meant NO FOOLING. He called the Jordanian Central Intelligence to investigate. The JCI caught the main people who stole the papers, and they also caught several private schools who bought the exams. Apparently, the head of the 4th Educational Area was involved in this act of corruption.

This decision must have been VERY BRAVE by the minister of education. His job is on the line now - but still, he did it, because it's the right thing.

This minister of education, Dr. Khaled Touqan, graduated from MIT and taught there for a while. And then, he came back to head the University of Balqa. Pretty much, he brought the best professors from University of Jordan who were reprimanded time and again for their advanced and progressive educational methods. I met several of these professors, and they talk about this guy as a great and brilliant scientist and manager. He was the one who convinced the EU to build a Nuclear Research plant in Jordan for the use of the Middle East universities. He then became the minister of Education. One of his biggest achievements so far is putting the Internet in the education. He has requested that every single teacher in the ministry to take free Internet and Computer courses. He's also installing a complete IT infrastructure to keep and distribute all data in schools and the ministry. My mother is a teacher in a public school, and it's amazing to see her talk about NetMeeting and chatting and using Word and Excel. Now, just imagine that all public school teachers will - slows but persistently - will reach that point.

The only bad thing about Dr.Touqan's Press Release was the VERY VERY STUPID journalists who were asking if he will give his resignation, and some were repeating out-of-earth rumors about "getting phone calls from Singapore to initiate the investigation"!! Anyways, to look at the positive side, the journalists had the chance to be rude during the press release, which is SOMETHING RATHER NEW in a small 3rd world country like Jordan.

Today, I'm very happy. I'm very hopeful. I'm very proud to be Jordanian.