reactions from Kuwait

Reactions from Kuwait

School: American International School

Date: 2-12-2001

I am the head of the social studies department at the American International School in Kuwait and I also teach Modern World History and an elective I designed, History Through Art and Architecture. Out of the list you sent, the art text book has only work from Rubens and the history text used by the school has only Breughel and Van Eyck. There may be a reason for the poor representation in the art history text - due to censorship rules (Kuwait is an Islamic country and here they don't know the meaning of the word "excessive") I had to choose a text that had no nudity, hints of nudity, or gave the impression that underneath the clothing, the people in the pictures may, in fact, be nude. Also, I could not select a text with any pictures of the prophets, which include Jesus and just about everybody in the old testament. The book I selected, "The Visual Experience", also had to be used by the middle school. I still ended up censoring about 30 images...what a place to teach art history. As for the history text, I did not select it, would not select it and don't use it. Other teachers in the department do use it, however, but I can't figure out why. Perhaps you can recommend a book we could purchase for our library.

Good luck on your project, Charles Benoit, Social Studies Head of Department, AIS Kuwait