المنتدى

The Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST), part of UNESCO, in collaboration with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences has just published its second paper discussion titled:

High School Perceptions of the Social Sciences in Beirut, A Pilot Study

Author:

Muneira Hoballah - ACSS working group member who is currently pursuing her PhD in Anthropology at the University of California-Irvine

Co-authors:

Farah Al-Souri - ACSS Senior Grants Officer

Khalil Makari - Professor of Arabic Language for non-native speakers at Lebanese American University as well as working on World History Book series for the International School of Qatar

Lama Ghanem - Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Officer at Arena 

Rima Majed - Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut

Editing:

Seteney Shami - ACSS Director General

Abstract:

High school students in the majority Arabic-speaking region are discouraged from pursuing social science degrees or careers, which are seen as less prestigious than the same in medicine, law or engineering. The Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) launched a pilot project titled, Towards a New Generation of Social Sciences, exploring the prevalence of these views and developing research and dissemination tools to counter misconceptions of the social sciences as intellectually inferior or as relatively useless in the job market. This policy paper analyzes the outcomes of the pilot project in Lebanon and concludes with more general recommendations that can travel based on collaborative research.

Please access the complete paper here.