Sight is one of the most miraculous things for which we can never be thankful enough. Our eyes serve as windows connecting our inner life with the outer world. In “Retina the Mind-Boggler,” Dr. Serranur explains the intricacies of the eye’s physiology. Despite many theories and scientific advances, we still don’t completely know how sight works. Scientists do know that the retina plays a crucial role in this very complex structure – so important, in fact, not every eye surgeon dares touch it.

Stem cell research has expanded our understanding of biology and medicine to once-unimaginable levels. Among the treatments for which the initial findings are promising are paralysis, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and even blindness. Despite these groundbreaking discoveries, many are not sure about how far we should go in genetic programming. Dr. Yorulmaz elaborates on this dilemma in “Embryonic Stem Cells.”

The question of how to handle refugees has been a critical issue throughout human history. Despite many regulations, international legal conventions, and technological progress, refugees still pose intractable questions to governments around the world. Last summer, when Dr. Sophia Pandya was visiting Greece to observe the situation of refugees there, the country suffered one of the deadliest wildfires of the twenty-first century, in which a hundred people died and more than a thousand buildings were destroyed. Greece has been the crossroads for many refugees, including, yes, many Turkish citizens, especially in the last few years. The Erdoğan regime’s clampdown on the Hizmet Movement and many others who oppose his autocracy has forced tens of thousands of Turkish citizens to flee their homes and seek asylum in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands of people have been detained in these purges; thousands more are waiting their turn, as their freedom to travel has been illegally curtailed by the Turkish government. What is their crime? Association with a group that opposes autocracy and supports democracy. For many fleeing injustice, Greece has become the last chance for freedom. What Dr. Pandya saw there was representative of what the Hizmet Movement has been doing for decades: Turkish refugees reached out to victims of the wildfires and distributed food and other aid. This was their way of responding to the hospitality of Greek people, who opened their homes to refugees when, as described in this issue’s lead article, they were forced to flee “dark-spirited night demons who were overwhelmed by hatred, rancor, and enmity, and dejected souls growling with wrath.”

After the discovery of using steel to reinforce concrete, reinforced concrete buildings became extremely popular and presented a significant solution to the housing needs of urban populations.

The composition of concrete

Concrete is a structural material formed via blending sand, gravel, cement, and water. The specifications and ratios of the materials present in the mix directly determine the quality of the concrete. Generally, this ratio is 31 sand, 46 gravel, 15 cement, and 8 water. These ratios may vary depending on the construction needs.

The mixture of sand and gravel is described as an aggregate. Usually, aggregates up to 7 mm are called sand, and aggregates between 7-70 mm are called gravel. The most important role of the aggregate as a fill material is to reduce the volumetric changes of the concrete. The dough composed of water and cement displays great changes in volume. The introduction of sand and gravel into the cement helps to lessen these changes and also saves resources, since it is cheaper than cement. In order to obtain a concrete of good quality and applicable texture, the sand and gravel grains should be as round as possible and have similar diameters to each other.

Cement is produced from grinding a mixture of clay stones and limestone (CaCO3) that are cured at high temperatures. Cement is very important; when combined with water, it helps concrete to quickly solidify. The time the mix takes to solidify is called the setting time, and it is usually between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on environmental conditions. This time is shorter on warmer days and longer on colder days. Concrete begins to gain endurance (hardening) as it solidifies. It takes 28 days for the concrete to reach an endurance of 60-90 , and a much longer time to reach 100, depending on conditions. The cement amount in a cubic meter of concrete is called the dosage. One common and incorrect perception is that concrete endurance changes with the dosage. However in a mixture of a well adjusted sand and gravel ratio, concrete endurance depends on the water-cement ratio.

The water that can be used in the concrete mixture should be drinkable water that does not contain acids and salts. It is important that the water has a pH value higher than 7 and is free of carbonic acid, manganese compounds, ammonium salts, free chlorine, mineral oils, and industrial waste. Therefore, it should not be forgotten that sea water must not be used in the concrete mixture because of the salt it contains.

The properties of steel

Iron alloys that can be processed mechanically – either through pressing or rolling – are called steel. Iron is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, making up nearly 4.5 of it. The most important element that specifies the property of steel is carbon. The role of carbon in steel’s structure is to harden the iron alloy and prevent the shifting of iron atoms. By adjusting the amount of carbon in the alloy, steel’s hardness, ductility, and endurance can be changed. Both the endurance and hardness of steel increases as the amount of carbon is enriched. However, this application increases steel’s fragility, reducing some of its features, such as ductility. Therefore, a 5 carbon level in the raw iron obtained through the melting of iron ore is decreased to 0.1 0.2, enabling steel to be processed. Iron alloys (steel) composed of elements such as carbon, silicon, manganese, chromium, copper, nickel and molybdenum are utilized in building structures.

The conformity of concrete and steel as reinforced concrete

Reinforced concrete materials are used in the construction of buildings, bridges, dams, and tunnels. The use of reinforced concrete became common at the end of the nineteenth century. For the best final product, the concrete and steel should be well integrated, and both should be of high quality.

Concrete and steel are two substances with very different characteristics. However, an inseparable coupling forms by balancing one’s disadvantages with the other’s advantages. Concrete is a material of high pressure endurance. And even though steel also has high pressure endurance, it still faces the risk of bending. The tensile strength of concrete is weak, but it is high in steel. Concrete is fire resistant; steel is vulnerable. Concrete is durable against external impacts, whereas steel is vulnerable, with a high risk of corrosion. Concrete has a brittle, breakable structure; steel, however, has a higher level of ductility. Even though concrete and steel generally behave the opposite of each other, they compensate for each other when they are together. For example, the tendency of steel to bend disappears after it is surrounded with concrete; concrete also increases steel’s resistance to fire and corrosion. Furthermore, with the steel’s presence inside it, the tensile strength of concrete is enhanced.

The first of the three characteristic features of reinforced concrete buildings is the compensation of all tensile forces via steel rods; the second one is the integration of concrete and steel into each other like the adherence of flesh and bone; and finally, concrete and steel have the same thermal expansion coefficients. The thermal expansion coefficient is the value that determines the amount a material will expand or retract when impacted by heat. The thermal expansion coefficients of substances on Earth vary greatly. For instance, aluminum has a coefficient of 2,2×10-5 L/0C, copper of 1,7×10-5 L/0C, gold of 1,4×10-5 L/0C and glass of 0,85×10-5 L/0C (L= Length). It is harder for materials of different thermal expansion coefficients to have conforming movements. The most important reason for the harmonious union of concrete and steel is that their thermal coefficient values are almost the same (1,2×10-5 L/0C). If this was not the case, because of the temperature differences of inside and outside environments, the concrete and steel that make up the reinforced concrete would expand at different speeds, resulting in cracks and fractures of the load bearing elements of the building (columns, beams, flooring).

Though concrete and steel have vastly different properties, their thermal expansion coefficient values are the same and this causes them to move together during temperature changes. A similar system is put to use during the creation of cartilage, bone, and connective tissues in our body. The fibers of the connective tissue resemble the iron and steel, the cells are similar to gravel, and the intercellular matrix resembles the cement. The difference is that this system is renewed dynamically, and is flexible and strong.

In this discussion we will look at typical architectural forms of the Islamic city which reflect the social and cultural characteristics of Islamic community, and the impact upon the Islamic city and its Muslim inhabitants of the cultural invasion by modern Western (i.e.post-industrial) practices in urban design.

Architectural changes in the Islamic city

It is difficult to identify the architectural characteristics of cities in the Arab region before the advent of Islam because some have vanished and others have been greatly altered by developments after Islam. Most were established in the river valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the littoral of the Levant and the southern Mediterranean. The prevailing type of major human settlements the Muslims encountered was the Greek-Roman type, a chess-board plan of equal sectors around the forum as administrative and commercial centre. Otherwise, the settlements were clusters of houses, more like villages rather than cities, and separated by open lands. Archeological remains show that most of these houses had internal yards to cope with the climatic and environmental conditions. There were also advanced engineering systems to provide the cities with water and irrigation. Greek colonies had long been established in urban settlements in Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, as well as in parts of Egypt and North Africa. These were taken over by the Romans when they extended their empire to the eastern Mediterranean areas. There, they built cities sited and garrisoned for military purposes but soon afterwards transformed into commercial centres with markets and factories. Roman cities were distinguished from other cities in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region by their rigidly hierarchic arrangement of buildings and houses-the governing elite being nearest the centre and the lowest classes being furthest away.

This architectural pattern remained in place unchanged till around the middle of the seventh century when the rule of Islam spread, with unprecedented speed, out of the Arabian Peninsula westward across North Africa, northward over Asia Minor, and eastward across the former Persian empire. The region then witnessed the highest architectural growth in its long history. The Muslims followed Islamic Law and Islamic teachings on social and cultural aspects of community life in managing the cities they had conquered and the new cities they founded. Of the latter the most important- Basra (I4AH/635), Kufa (17AH/639), Fustat (21AH/641), Qairawan (48AH/670) and others-were large garrison settlements to start with but, as provincial administrative capitals, grew in size and importance as centres of Islamic learning and civilization-Fustat, for example, became Cairo.

While city planning and building necessarily responded to local conditions, there are typical architectural features by which the Islamic city is distinguished. The most important of these is the congregational mosques, built to express and focus the religious commitment of the Muslim community and its solidarity. The commercial and administrative activities and associated buildings grew around this central symbol of the Islamic city. An equally significant feature was the division of the cities into quarters where the Arab settlers were first housed: in many cases the different quarters are still called by the names of the clans who first inhabited them. There were also separate quarters for non-Arab converts to Islam from among the conquered peoples and, later, quarters also for the non-Muslims, the different areas being linked by roads and lanes and joined to the common centre.

The city was surrounded by a wall which, in addition to providing

some defence in the event of military attack, protected the inhabitants against the sand-laden desert winds. Access into the city was by large gates in the city walls, then along the main spinal roads where the commercial activities were concentrated. Workshops and small factories were situated side by side, often co-operating in the production of different articles. Islamic schools were situated around the central mosque, often funded by the rentals from traders in the nearby marketplace which typically had associated craft-shops such as book-binding and book-selling, sign writing, carpet making, etc, close to the central area. Commercial centres also grew up around the main city gates, serving the residential areas of the city and outlying villages. From the commercial centre, streets and roads branched out, usually becoming narrower and more winding, more disposed to provide seclusion than general access, into the residential quarters. Here too, there were smaller mosques and prayer-halls, but this was, broadly speaking, the private as distinct from the public part of the city, and intended to provide peace and quiet, intimacy and security, to the inhabitants. This arrangement, with its public/private division is still visible in some of the older cities of North Africa.

The elevations on the Islamic city streets are distinguished by their plainness and simplicity, very few openings and the low height commensurate wh the width of the streets. In contrast to the simplicity of architectural expression of the exterior facades, the interior of the houses was rich in architectural details and ornamentation, varying according to the tastes and means of the occupants. Thus, while simplicity and likeness on the outside confirmed the solidarity and egalitarianism of the community, the variety and wealth of the interiors allowed for individual freedom.

As noted above, building design varied from location to location, with different architectural solutions being adopted to suit different conditions. The wind tower (malqaf) is an example. In the dry hot areas it is directed to the north where winds blow most times of the year. Thus air is funnelled from top to bottom through moist elements in order to increase the percentage of moisture in the air and so enhance the feeling of coolness during the hot summer days. In more humid areas, the air corridor is pointed to all four sides in order to increase the chance of catching the wind flow, and the air is directed from top to bottom through moisture-absorbing elements to reduce the effects of summer humidity.

Though a central market-place is a common architectural feature of Islamic cities, public squares never achieved the prominence they have in Western cities, with the exception of some examples such as Shah Square in Isfahan, an impressive 510 m by 165 m and surrounded by shops and overlooked by the splendid Shah Mosque with its many domes at the entrance of the main city market.

With the decline of the Ottoman Turkish state from the late seventeenth century onwards, as the trade and commercial life of the Islamic world was squeezed by the expansion of the maritime powers of western Europe, the Islamic cities fell into a corresponding architectural decline and chaos. Thus, the golden epoch of the Islamic city in the Middle East was during the period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, continued into the eighteenth century in the area under Ottoman rule in such places as Istanbul, Bursa, Konya and Bosnia. In the nineteenth century, following the industrial revolution in Europe, European economic and military superiority began to curtail the independence of Muslim peoples all over the Islamic world, most of whom were eventually colonized. The changes that followed affected the social and economic life of the Islamic world and the changes were reflected in the architecture of the Muslims’ cities. Cultural values that had prevailed in the Islamic city were set back, and the Islamic city lost its cultural identity and its distinct architectural feel.

The modern city, needing to provide large populations with utilities and public services, called for new patterns in urban planning contrary to the planning patterns of traditional cities. These new patterns were imported to the Islamic world from the West together with Western technologies, and cities came to be designed for road networks for vehicles and utilities networks. Western architectural forms appeared in public buildings like banks, courts, universities, schools and administrative centres, as well as in private palaces and private homes. Thinkers and architects in the Islamic world have been deeply disturbed by these changes and have searched for forms which can link the contemporary Islamic city with the values, teachings and spirit of Islam, an effort that is part and parcel of the general quest to rebuild a contemporary Islamic civilization.

Traditional Islamic architecture and modern dwellings

According to Islamic tradition, man is the high aim or object of creation, born perfectible though capable of sin and charged with the responsibility of constructing a beautiful world, almost a reflection of Paradise. So, in Islam, a work of art can be regarded as the product of human will and effort, individual and collective, to make the world (and human life in the world) beautiful. That is one of the reasons why architecture has been prominent among other fine arts in Islamic societies.

Western domination of Muslim lands has had its effect on architecture. As in the modern West, Muslim intellectuals have ceased to see life an integrated whole, and deal with the problems that arise separately, with little care or attention to the consequences of their solutions for the life of the community as a whole. Modern attitudes give priority to the material dimensions of life, to the short cycle of production and consumption, investment and drawing profit. This makes it very difficult to build for beauty, to build for the generations to come. That is why newness and being modern is part of the self-consciousness of even the most important public building projects in the West, and it is difficult to see how aggressively modern buildings can become loved over the centuries in the way that the pre-modern traditionally built monuments are loved, and loved as beautiful even when they are in ruins. A modern building in ruins is unbearably ugly. The emphasis on material considerations has of course also meant a cruel functionalism, the reduction of building to the economic calculation of maximum rent per square millimetre of land, or maximum dwelling space for minimum production costs. The effects on design and choice of materials of these considerations has resulted in the towers of steel and cement which so alienate and depress modern city- dwellers. The contemporary Islamic city has not, unfortunately, escaped the pressures to conform to the styles dominant in the Western cities.

The modern Islamic city is no longer a unity or totality encompassing the family, the district, the natural environment, unifying action with the spiritual, the functional with the beautiful, the private secluded space for family residence with access to public space for communal, collective activities. Individualism has captivated almost all people, with the result that almost no one tries to build in accord or harmony with his neighbours, near or far, but tries to outdo them. Ostentation in exterior facades has come to characterize both private and public buildings, with individuals trying to show off their wealth or taste, and corporations or departments of state trying to project their power or authority onto the streets to impress passers-by.

When human existence began to be viewed as made up of disconnected material and spiritual elements, the arts, architecture included, inevitably reflected the change. Art is not now that beauty of man-made things which appears (and should appear) in the ordinary use of things, to add (like good manners) grace to ordinary living, to elevate the spirit. Instead, art has become that which is seen in special objects, prized and priced by specialists, pieces for the museum: the beautiful carpet is hung on the wall. Architecture of course has to be useful, practical, and has consequently suffered the worst extreme of the effects of commercialism and mass-production. Thus, families are not linked to each other by shared spaces leading into accessible areas where they do things in common like going to the mosque or the market, but are instead stacked one on top of the other in residential towers of steel, concrete and glass, as physically near to each other as ever but near without easy accessibility, so that people feel crowded without feeling together. The pressure of land values has become so intense in certain cities that, in some individual buildings, as many as 30.000 people may come and go each day, with all the necessary services laid on: as exercises of human power and planning, these buildings are spectacular achievements, but insofar as architecture is supposed to provide an environment which expresses the values of human life and symbolizes great human aspirations, these buildings are failures. The values they express are this-worldly materialism and commercialism, functionality disconnected from the higher purposes and the deeper needs of human beings.

Belief in eternity is central in Muslim life and has had a very particular influence on Islamic architecture. Belief in eternity leads a Muslim to see everything as formed in an infinitude of time and space which cannot be changed by man, cannot be divided into parcels. What first interests a Muslim architect is, rather than the size and shape of the site, the architectural features in spatial infinitude, that is, the relation of the site to its environment and how the whole space around the site fells. The site is seen in its full environmental context, not as a fixed and separate volume exploitable for some specific building purpose. That is why the traditional Islamic constructions, especially those for public use, were complexes of buildings– mosque, school, pool or fountain with faucets at the sides for ablution, library, bath houses, and residential rooms for teachers or students.What first catches the eye is not the individual buildings composing the collection, but the collection itself, so it is experienced as a whole with all its fronts, from top to bottom, from bottom to top. (In the West, the mediaeval collegiate buildings in the ancient universities like Oxford or Cambridge which were derived from Islamic models, are the nearest equivalent though. of course, being cut off from the normal life of the towns in which they were situated, these buildings do not have the feel of Islamic mosque-madrassa-market-place complexes.)

The infinitude of space in Islamic architecture showed itself both in the horizontal extension seen from windows, and in the vertical extension symbolized by the minarets and domes of mosques. Intimate courtyards, often arcaded with asymmetrical arches, set off by trees, gardens and flowers, and surrounded by high walls, symbolized privacy: while their firmness of construction symbolized the hope of eternity and beauty everlasting. The roof lines, bay windows and wooden latticework over windows, the terraces and the variety of interior ornamentation expressed spiritual richness, serenity and quiet, a kind of solemn peace at ease with itself-this is especially characteristic of Turkish architecture with its wealth of naturalistic motifs.

The older Turkish houses especially were dwellings providing both privacy and sociability-dwellings where the sanctity of family life was deeply felt but whose seclusion was not an isolation because the structure was complementary to similar residences spaced closely in the whole district. They inspired the feeling of a meaningful, modest existence and were lively, secure and spacious, homes in which the residents lived conscious of their own identity and of their belonging to their community.

Islam is based on unity in multiplicity and harmonious wholeness of opposites. It frees man from intellectual and spiritual fragmentation, unifying his life on the basis of tawhid. Tawhid, that is, attributing all existence to God and affirming His Unity, without associating any partners with Him, is the integrative principle of harmony, able to align the physical with the metaphysical, the functional with the ideal, the corpo-real with the spiritual, and the individual with the communal. All dimensions of man’s earthly life have their proper stations within the matrix of Tawhid so that each can serve its function and enable man to be at peace with his whole being, his self, his family, his community and the natural world, and ultimately to earn happiness in both worlds. Tawhid enables a Muslim to maintain a holistic view of life; to see the city and its districts and their functions, and his home, within the one same whole, as fully interconnected and interdependent. It is unsurprising if a Muslim is exceptionally challenged and alienated by the assumptions and values which underlie modern Western thinking and the cities it has produced.

Daylighting is becoming more popular in commercial buildings and manufacturing facilities in the United States. After Thomas Edison invented the electric light, most architects changed their building plans and designed for more and more artificial lighting. As a result, only a very small percentage of the light used in major buildings and facilities came directly from the sun. Recently, the Europeans have realized the importance of daylighting and begun to use a reasonable percentage of sunlight in their buildings. The Rocky Mountain Institute, Snow-mass, Colorado, has investigated the benefits of daylighting and reported that daylighting increased productivity and reduced absenteeism by 15 percent. Also, sunlight reduces the heating and cooling bill.

In 1993, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. opened a prototype store in Lawrence, Kansas, with nine special skylights designed by Andersen Corp., Bayport, Minnesota. The architectural firm of Leo A. Daly, Omaha, Nebraska, opened an office building in 1983 with l5ft high window walls and a glazed roof. About 50% of its electricity bill for lighting was saved as a result (Reno Gazette-Journal, November 27, 1995). Daylighting is an inexpensive way of lighting interiors since the sun is a ‘free’ light source which can be further exploited by installing skylights on the roof. On an overcast day, the light entering through a 2 sq. ft skylight area is equivalent to three 100-watt light bulbs.

There are two additional reasons for installing skylights. First, the cooling load of a building can be reduced by using daylight. The reason for this is that whereas about 80% of the power of an electric light is converted to heat, sunlight has a far lower heat content and therefore requires far less air-conditioning. Second, just at the time when there is the heaviest demand for electricity (and other utilities) from manufacturing facilities, namely during the summer, sunlight is at its most plentiful and available: in short, skylights can significantly reduce peak load stresses and costs.

An illumination level of 50 footcandles (540 Lux) at the work site is the design standard in industrial facilities. A large portion of this illumination level comes from electric lights of fluorescent and incandescent lamps. Almost 5% of electricity consumption in the US is used up to provide adequate illumination in commercial and industrial buildings.

In production facilities generally, there is a lack of awareness about the energy conservation potential of skylights. Some manufacturers are so unaware about the cost savings that can be achieved by daylighting that they do not have skylights in their production areas, and leave lamps on in work areas throughout daylight hours. In other places which do have them, skylights have been neglected to the extent that they are so dirty they block the incoming sunlight.

Since heating and cooling load are increased with increased skylight surface area, there is a limitation associated with this measure. Some authorities have suggested that the optimum skylight surface area should be reckoned at between 2 and 4% of roof surface area. However, since the measure depends upon local climate conditions, the range should be allowed to vary between 2 and 10%. In many potential sites, heating only (and not cooling) is the principal consideration. Generally, therefore, building designers with heating costs in mind tend to prefer 2% for cold climates and 10% for warm climates.

Heating load and costs will increase when skylights are installed. However, the increase in heating cost is considerably smaller than the saving from reduced lighting cost. The average unit cost of electricity is three times greater than that of natural gas (typically preferred for heating). In any case, heat loss from the skylights can be minimized by double glazing them. In view of the favourable financial balance and the productivity improvements to be expected from daylight working, the benefits from installing skylights generally offset any negative consequences of doing so.

The amount of savings in electric lighting consumption and costs depends on climate and operating periods. The payback period for installing skylights ranges from one to five years. They can be an expensive roof aperture, but it is relevant to note that the lifetime of a skylight is more than twenty years. The skylights need to be cleaned at least once annually, which means that service and maintenance costs are negligible. Skylights are most cost- effective in uninsulated ceilings in climates, like that of southern California, which have no heating season. In such climates, the workplace roof is typically covered with corrugated metal sheets making skylights both easy and cheap to install: corrugated fibreglass sheets can be cut and fitted in place of the metal sheets wherever the skylights are required.

References 

• MURDOCH, B. J. (1985) Illumination Engineering: From Edison’s Lamp to the Laser, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York.
• NUTFER, D. W., BRITTON A. J. and HEFFINGTON W. M. (1993) ‘Conserve Energy to Cut Operating Costs’, Chemical Engineering, September, pp.126-37.
• PIERSON, J. (1995) ‘Natural light gets warm welcome’, Reno Gazette-Journal, November 27, pp.2ff. 

Where the school is situated effects the quality of education it can provide. Ideally it should be detached from urban centres. Noise and disturbance around the school can be just as disruptive as noise within the classroom. The easy access in town to cinemas and cafes, to sports stadia, to shopping or amusement arcades, prevent the pupils from committing themselves fully to their school life. Away from these temptations, pupils will be able to devote more time to reading and relevant conversation and, when they need to relax, to active, useful pastimes in each other’s company. In this way, they will have the freedom to become more broadly cultured. They will develop self-reliance, and independence and will be able to concentrate more on their academic achievement. Also, the beneficial effects of exposure to the freshness and restful colours of a rural setting are well known – to say nothing of the advantages for students of nature, whether artistic or scientific, of having the real thing outside the window

Physical design

As well as setting, the design of the school buildings and equipment are vitally important. For example, desks and chairs that are too comfortable may encourage an over-relaxed, even lazy, attitude in pupils; on the other hand, if they are too luxurious and ugly they may cause distress and restlessness in class. Each individual pupil should be assigned a desk and a locker specifically for his or her use. This would free pupils of the burden of carrying too much around with them from lesson to lesson. The general character of the school buildings should, I suggest, be traditional. At present, the primary consideration in the design of buildings is cost – the ‘best’ design is the cheapest. By contrast, in the past, efforts were made to surround the schools and universities with green, with trees and walks in wooded lanes, rivers and ponds, besides which the pupils could relax. Consider how well the learning environment was designed and presented in the ancient seats of learning like Oxford or Cambridge – their buildings seem, in a sense, to improve as they age. They used stone to build thick walls and walled many interior spaces with quadrangles and cloisters which owe their form and function, ultimately, to Islamic originals in the Maghreb and Spain.

Nosy cost-cutting has led to the building of separation walls so thin that teacher and pupils can hear what is being said in the next room:the resulting distraction can lead to irritability and loss of learning time. Lighting is another important factor, too often neglected. Artificial lighting is not as satisfactory as natural light. As well as being costly to run, many pupils daim that it leaves them feeling tired at the end of the day The maximum possible use should be made of natural light. Apart from being ‘free’, it is conducive to the well-being and cheerfulness of both teachers and pupils. Similarly air circulation should depend on openable windows rather than on noisy (and expensive) air coolers and fans.

It is necessary to give adequate attention to the maintenance of a mean temperature that is neither too hot nor too cold. In view of the cost of heating, it may be advisable to invest in a system that, although costly to install, may be cheaper in the long term, such as solar energy.

Tower block construction is quite unsuitable for educational buildings as it inhibits direct, physical contact between students. Again, telephone or computer networks, important as they may be, are no substitute for direct personal contact which is indispensable for teaching and learning.

The detachment of the school from the urban centre means that its buildings complex must be self- dependent. Facilities need to be provided on or very near the school so that leisure activities, vital to the enhancement of study can be easily accessed. They should include sports fields and gymnasia. It is important that the school caters for the needs of pupils so as to allow them to play and compete in a proper way: failure to do so will only encourage truancy.

The ethos of the school should encourage self-discipline and self- improvement. The school should not, in other words, try to mimic the society at large, rather it should aim to reform and improve that society. To this end, chewing gum and smoking and other such habits should be banned altogether, not only in certain areas or at certain times. The walls and halls of the school should bear the portraits, or record the achievements, of the men and women who have set a good example in their particular walk of life. The decor of individual buildings or rooms should, as far as possible, reflect their particular character and purpose: a biology laboratory should look and feel different from a chemistry laboratory; the walls of the dining room should not be the same as those of the classroom, and so on.

The school library should be one of, if not the, most important resource and access should be made easy. It hardly needs saying that books and periodicals should be as up to date as possible, that many kinds of newspapers should be made available to enable students to keep up with (and have informed discussion about) current affairs. In general, the equipment used by pupils should be the best and most modern available. It seriously damages morale if the pupils know that, for instance, the computers they are using are obsolete models. Also, the relevance of what is learnt using certain equipment is significantly diminished if that equipment is no longer in service outside school.

Relevance is a principle that needs to apply to course design as well as to decor and equipment. Unfortunately; too much of what is taught in existing schools is known (and felt) by pupils to be merely ‘academic’. It is particularly important in science and technology that pupils have the opportunity to try out, to apply in practice, what they have learnt in theory. Otherwise, pupils will leave school with a mass of information into their heads but no experience of how to translate that knowledge into practical design or actual manufacture.

The teachers

The teachers are the essential key to whether an educational institution succeeds or fails. A good teacher is one who stays abreast of the latest developments in his or her field and knows how to pass on that knowledge to others. Although there are worthy arguments against doing so, I favour the regular resting of teachers to ensure that they are keeping up in their subject areas. There are, alas, too many teachers who use the same notes they used twenty years before, and whose work (for the pupils as well for themselves) lacks freshness and appeal.

Beside intellectual and teaching ability teachers should be trained and selected for a number of other qualities:

1. strict punctuality – the teacher should not arrive late to class;
2. fairness the teacher must have an understanding of the personal frictions that can develop between teacher and pupil and how to overcome them;
3. sense of humour – while retaining some distance and authority the teacher should not be solemn for the whole of a teaching period, but vary and lighten the tone of the teaching in order to keep the attention of the pupils;
4. openness to innovations – new equipment and new techniques are always coming onto the market:the teacher should seek to exploit these effectively not avoid them because it might mean changing established methods and habits;
5. freshness – the teacher should seek to adapt and combine different teaching styles and methods in the way most effective for pupils doing that particular subject at that particular level: in language training, for example, some ready- to-use courses require the teacher to lecture, others to merely observe, others to participate with pupils, etc.- a good teacher should know how to mix and match from what is available to suit his pupils’ needs;
6. sensitivity – the teacher should be alert to the social and cultural norms of his pupils and go with care when mentioning or discussing ideas or symbols which have special resonance for them, even when he or she does not share the same norms.

Teachers need to be well-trained to start with. However, they also need to be provided with opportunities to further their knowledge and skills, if necessary going abroad on a direct or exchange basis with foreign establishments. And finally, to secure high morale among teachers and commitment from them in a taxing profession, they need to be much better paid than they are at present in Turkey for example: many, alas, have to devote some of their time and energy in a second job, simply to make ends meet.

The pupils

An effective class is one made up, more or less, of pupils of the same ability at the same level. To achieve this, testing of pupils before, and perhaps also after, they are admitted is essential. Mixed ability schools are one thing but mixed ability classes are quite another and impose intolerable burdens on the teacher who cannot know how to plan the pace and level of difficulty of what he is teaching: going too slowly he or she risks losing the attention of the brighter pupils, going too fast risks driving the weaker pupils to opt out of the lessons altogether.

It is important too for the school to screen the pupils it admits for personality or character as well as for academic potential. If such information is available to teachers, they will not overreact when a pupil with, say, a record of bullying or stealing, bullies or steals. Too harsh a punishment by a teacher could further intensify the pupil’s problems which would, in turn, affect class and school performance.

To diminish the effects of social class differences, at least during school time, pupils should wear a uniform or the same or very similar clothes. Teachers can be expected to behave more fairly towards pupils if they appear the same.

The administrators

Administrators, especially principals and heads of school, should be authoritative and serious. Their concern for discipline should be equitable, and focus on teachers as well as pupils. They should encourage and enable parent-teacher meetings at the school to discuss an individual pupil’s progress with his or her teachers. It is the duty of administrators to see to it that the school is clean and fit for all normal activities. It also falls on them to advertise the school effectively so as to raise its image in public perception and so attract more pupils.

Finally administrators need to keep abreast of the latest developments in educational psychology and innovations in methods or equipment.

The family

Parents mostly entrust their children to schools (rather than teach them themselves) and for many ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies. However, education and upbringing are very much within the responsibilities of parents to children. The parents may be disappointed by their child’s performance but must not blame the teachers for it. Rather, they should openly acknowledge the effects of family life on the stability of children’s character and on the quality of their performance. Parents should exhort children to do their homework, to take part only in such leisure activities as are beneficial, and help their attendance at school by accompanying them to it.

Instruction and teaching materials

Instruction hours should not be overly prolonged as pupils’ attention span is limited. Particularly to be avoided is the habit some teachers now have of combining two periods into a double period which is simply much too demanding for ordinary pupils. Instructional material exists in great abundance hut only appropriate use of it benefits pupils. TV and video need not be a means of passively wasting time; they can be applied to the job of teaching many hundreds of pupils at the same time.

Computers, will never replace human contact but are useful tools which ease organizational problems and can stimulate children. They may match certain temperaments and help children over specific learning difficulties.

Always relevant are the traditional instructional materials such as pictures, tables, diagrams, maps and illustrations. But the technology exists to operate these maps and diagrams through the computer by scanning images, or transferring them to overhead projector slides for a modern version of the blackboard.