Doha, September 28 (QNA) – Tariq Bin Ziad School, which is affiliated to the pre-university education at Qatar Foundation, launched an initiative to enhance national identity in Qatar Foundation schools through games and folk songs, in order to enhance the Qatari local dialect and preserve the importance of local culture and heritage.
Tariq Bin Ziad School, which is part of the pre-university education at Qatar Foundation, offers the International Baccalaureate program that focuses on strengthening the national, Arab and Islamic identity of its students through Qatari heritage, where the classrooms and outdoor courtyards in the school buzz with the voices of students playing popular games and chanting derived songs of heritage, in the context of reviving the Qatari folklore and strengthening the national identity.
The Director of Tariq Bin Ziad School Maha Al-Romaihi explains: “Tariq Bin Ziad School is unique in the sense that it combines cultural values and local heritage with world-class education.” She added that “One of the most important things we do in our school is to strengthen national identity through academic content and traditional games, to produce global citizens, but global citizens with a local spirit and a strong national identity.”
Al-Romaihi said that the school has been working to promote and celebrate the Qatari dialect, as students at private schools, or in QF schools that follow an international curriculum, speak English instead of using Standard Arabic, and this mean students can move away from using the local Qatari dialect. “The Qatari dialect has not disappeared, but it is not used enough,” she said, “so we seek to strengthen it. And we have found that we can do this by integrating it into the curricula and the school community in a thoughtful and systematic manner and using it as an entry point for teaching Arabic”. (QNA)