Arabic Group's Guest Speaker

I enjoyed the guest speaker that the Arabic group brought into class because he was a real person with real experiences, rather than the ones that are fictitious and written in novels. I definitely learned so much about Egyptian culture; it is far different from the culture of the Western World. First I can not imagine studying 12 hours a day in high school, or even now that I am in college; having a social life is hard enough as it is and I think I would die if I studied 12 hours a day. But that is just it, U.S. culture does not put such emphasis on our education, there are many people who grow successfully even after poor grades in high school. School has always been important to me but our guest speaker seemed so passionate about learning, listening to him speak was almost like listening to the Imam speak when we went to the Mosque. Another difference between the two cultures of education is that your high school GPA does not determine what types of programs and types of careers you can have. I had a fairly high GPA but that does not mean I have to go into Political Science, and I had friends with lower GPAs but they were not restricted to being farmers or teachers. Also the level of respect for teachers is far greater in Egypt than it is here in the United States, and to me this is a bit ridiculous, because they teach our future, they should at least have some respect. There is a similarity in the way teachers are treated in these two cultures however, both pay their teachers almost nothing. Although this is true, Egyptian teachers have it worse off, I cannot even fathom how Ashley’s Arabic professor survived on 16 dollars a month for teaching and having to work 12 hour shifts to make up for the difference and then returning to teach for the next day. Another interesting fact that our speaker brought to my attention was the fact that there are more women than men at the Universities and that the scientist behind the weapons of mass destruction was a woman. Though these ideas point towards equality of women I still have a hard time believing that women are equal to men, as the Professor was saying.