AEPS?!

I've been going every saturday to a VERY VERY interesting 'workshop'. Interesting in very special ways.

This workshop is about a new 'advanced' curriculum in the area of Early Intervention. It follows team approach and require family support. A very nice and optimistic curriculum. An interesting Arabic dude decided to translate it and unfortunately our Ministry paid him hundreds of thousands. The goal behind this workshop is for us to be able to traine the others in the center. But...

What I hate in some people is when they TALK about things that they do not know about. Is it very difficult for people to simply say 'I dont know?' Okay fine we get that you have a phd and bla bla..but it doesnt mean that u know it all !!!

So this workshop was supposedly given by a dr.someone who translated a whole book that has assessments, evaluation forms, and curriculums for early intervention into Arabic. This curriculum has a lot of scoring, its international, very detailed and professional.

Arabic version: He translated the old edition. When he was done he realized that a new edition is produced. Okay now what should he do? AHA! Choose some stuff from the new one and add it to the other and maybe cancel some chapters of the test. Whatever. No one will notice. There you go. 4 huge boring books FULL of letters and words and spelling/vocab mistake. Translated word by word NOT by meaning. Stick the logo of the Ministry on the cover just for show-off. Hundreds of thousands for such crap.

I was angery, furious, extremely upset about how we tend to trust people and throw our money on things that are not even revised or certified! It was just so depressing and a waste of time. That person has supposedly earned a phd and he's responsible for the Masters program in a University that holds the name of my country. Such a shame.

Whats happening now is that we're so excited about borrowing everything from the West just to mention that OH our center uses AEPS or Portage or PECS or whatever. Its about the title not the content. Okay fine its such a great idea that we're actually translating curriculums but why can't we just do it the right way? hire the right people? follow the right procedure?