HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development witnessed the Opening Plenary session of the eighth World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) under the theme “Co-Exist, Co-Create: Learning to Live and Work Together”.

During the opening which took place in Qatar National Convention Centre, HH Sheikha Moza presented the WISE Prize for Education worth $500,000 to Patrick Awuah of Ghana, recognizing his great effort in the education field in his country.

The event was attended by HE Spouse to the Turkish President Emine Erdogan with the participation of more than 2,000 people from more than 100 countries that includes politicians, academics, policymakers, businesspersons and students.

HH Sheikha Moza welcomed the audience in a opening speech saying, as usual WISE brings everyone together as an international platform to create ideas, innovate solutions and deal with various developments in the reality of education. Her Highness said as everyone agrees education is the key for solutions, and expressed her fear that these solutions are unable to face the global challenges if an urgent action is not taken to fix this issue.

Her Highness explained that education issues always brings people back to testing all the changes undergone, including the testing education itself when necessary.

HH Sheikha Moza added that sooner or later education, which creates development, will face obstacles on different levels, politically, media, culturally and technologically. Her Highness added the greatest challenges came when the political discourse, in its eloquence, linguistic sophistication and what the media broadcasts, made a vision of the events on our behalf. Her Highness added that the result of the internet revolution of creating a virtual world deals with reality selectively and maintains its notion, putting reality in question. HH Sheikha Moza said hypocritical illusions being marketed in some media outlets in the form of real stories and being pictured as some what the truth, is not true and resulted in toppling the standards of media discourse.

Her Highness added the organized activities flooding the social media to promote propaganda, rumors and lies intended to divert people’s attention from previewing reality or getting in touch with the truth, then directing them to deal with what is meant to be a reality, is the manipulation Herbert Schiller spoke about in the early 1970’s.

Her Highness added that with these inputs, the outputs will inevitably be false realities that have been fabricated as alternative facts to be accepted in the so-called ‘post-fact world’. HH Sheikha Moza said in this regard the summit will hold a symposium on education in the post-fact world which is a world where the public opinion is not impacted by the substantive events, to the extent that they are influenced by emotion-based and personalized discourse, if the truth is being reproduced to take a different form that suits those who want to reshape the world according to their interests, based on false news, false images, false facts, and arrogance in order to pretend to represent the truth.

HH Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Qatar Foundation Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, expressed her astonishment that with these tools of disinformation was besieged Iraq for thirteen years and fabricated excuses for invasion in 2003 and called it the invasion, and strangely! Instead of finding the alleged weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has been subjected to total destruction.

Iraq, which was referred to its educational system in 1990 as one of the best education systems in the region and was on the verge of total eradication of illiteracy, wars and siege lead the country to the unfortunate conditions, adding that with the same tools Yemen is besieged today so as not to rise and settle and to plunge into the triangle of poverty, disease and illiteracy.

HH stressed that with the same tools Qatar have been besieged since the fifth of last June at a time when some wanted the siege to be difficult for us but it was difficult for them .. They wanted us to change and to change our approach but we did not change.

Sheikha Moza added that a world full of false news does not prevent us, defenders of education, from lining up to the front where the truth stands, with our belief that the values of education is dedicated to respecting the facts and the truth in educational contexts.

HH said that in order to make education coherent and real and strong in the face of the mechanisms of brain manipulation, we have to push for comprehensive reforms of the educational system, including curriculum and teaching methods to ensure the balanced mental construction of students and develop their critical mind to approach the various issues away from the mindset, and the need to equip students with cultural and media immunity through a structured media and knowledge education that qualifies them to deal critically with the media discourse and to develop their ability to examine the political discourse and to have insight in the content of the Internet.

She explained that this only fortify the generations against the risk of manipulation of their minds and hearts by unknown parties and unknown people tampering with cyber space without borders.

HH added that we, as Arabs, are not absolving ourselves when we transformed ourselves from makers of civilization and producers of science and philosophy more than a thousand years ago to consumers for what others produce. Arabs abandoned their role in human creativity in an effective way and have failed to contribute to modernity HH explained.

Sheikha Moza concluded by saying that we are inspired by the themes of WISE this year, the idea of co-existence, which in essence presents a solution to various challenges, notably security, peace, stability and development and called for the return to Education in order to establish the truth

Source: FANA