Between Education and Dignity: A Society in Crisis

The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) Professor Abs delivered this speech at the seminar organized by MECC under the title "Education in Lebanon and Human Dignity", on Thursday, November 6, 2025, at the MECC headquarters in Beirut.

Professor Michel Abs

The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)

When education lacks the necessary facilities and resources in a society whose primary wealth lies in its human resources and competencies, this represents the height of challenges.

Throughout their ancient and modern history, the Lebanese have known how to compensate for their scarcity of natural resources by focusing on human capabilities. They built a society based on innovation, creativity, initiative, and leadership across all fields, enabling them to enjoy a standard of living far exceeding their natural means.

In ancient times, the fleets of the Canaanite Phoenicians sailed the seas in search of adventure and wealth, succeeding greatly and culminating in the founding of Carthage after their mastery of the purple trade and maritime conquests.

In modern times, following the Industrial Revolution, the collapse of the agricultural structures of Mount Lebanon, the two World Wars, the Mandate period, and later the era of independence with its massive rural migration, Lebanese society discovered that education and capacity-building were the only paths to revival. Agriculture had disintegrated; industry remained mostly artisanal and was threatened by competition from Western imports.

Since the establishment of missionary universities in Lebanon in the nineteenth century, along with the accompanying school networks, Lebanon has become a cradle of learning and home to the largest number of schools and universities in the Antiochian East relative to its size.

For more than half a century, Lebanon came to be known as “the School of the East” and “the University of the East.” Education flourished impressively—both in terms of curriculum relevance and the quality of its institutions and instruction.

It is worth noting that public schools in Lebanon developed steadily until they rivaled private schools, producing students who excelled in official examinations and earned admission to top universities in Lebanon and abroad.

In parallel, the Lebanese University (the public university) expanded greatly, establishing a vast modern campus and numerous faculties covering all contemporary disciplines. Its Faculty of Education gained special prominence as it trained the teachers at the public school system, thereby elevating public education to higher levels. This, in turn, raised learning standards among less privileged social groups, enabling their children to pursue higher studies.

Before the Lebanese Civil War and until its outbreak in 1975, education in Lebanon had become a principal means of strengthening human dignity through the near equality of educational opportunities, except for two high-income professions, medicine and engineering, which were not yet available at the Lebanese University.

This “near equality” meant that private schools and universities offered certain advantages that public institutions lacked, due to bureaucratic obstacles, political balances, or sectarian and regional considerations.

That era was not ideal, but it was considered remarkably advanced for a society that valued private-sector achievements far more than public ones.

During and after the war, the situation changed radically. The Lebanese University was divided into five branches, its budgets were restricted, and its administration fell under the control of wartime powers and later sectarian quota systems. As for public schools, their condition became dire, plagued by insufficient budgets, staff shortages, deteriorating buildings, and lack of equipment. The list of deficiencies is long.

Today, the situation is again in turmoil. There is a struggle between those who seek to make education a tool for equal opportunity and human dignity, and those to whom such concerns are of no interest.

Public educational institutions are the primary means of strengthening human dignity, as they ensure equal educational opportunities for all Lebanese and allow students from modest backgrounds to reach advanced academic and, subsequently, socio-economic levels.

Furthermore, a fair tax law should be enacted to encourage high-income individuals to establish scholarship funds for students unable to continue their studies for financial reasons, a problem affecting many outstanding students in Lebanon.

If education and training, followed by professional specialization, do not serve as instruments of equality and social mobility for the Lebanese, then education, by definition, ceases to be a means of securing human dignity.