Knowledge does not preserve itself
In his book “The East and the West,” Ahmed Amin draws a comparison that can be summarized in a single sentence: The Easterner is asked “why” and answers “fate,” while the Westerner is asked “why” and answers “cause.” However, he adds in the same chapter that belief in fate is a correct belief and should not prevent one from taking action. I read this idea in the Ministry of Education’s library, in an old copy whose cover bore a handwritten title and whose pages had been typed on a typewriter.
The survival of a book of this age among us today is fate with clear causes: a library preserved it, successive staff members cared for it, and the Ministry recognized that some documents do not expire with the passage of time. This deserves our explicit gratitude, as the copy itself states that knowledge does not reach us on its own; it always requires someone to open the door for it and protect it from oblivion. In the library’s corridors, books are not the only residents; the educational memory of Kuwait resides there as well: references, publications, and documents that reveal how education emerged and evolved, and what ideas guided its curricula and institutions.
It may be that only one researcher will need one of these sources years from now, but its value is not measured by the number of its readers, but by the information that could have been lost without it. A specialized library is not judged by its crowding, but by what it prevents from being lost, and by its ability to place the correct source in the researcher’s hand when needed, even if decades later.
The Ministry of Education did not merely preserve paper; it preserved a context that allows us to understand what happened and why. However, preserving the past places before us the responsibility for the future. The library requires a comprehensive electronic catalog that enables searching its holdings, a scientific inventory of documents and editions of historical value, care to protect originals, selective digitization of materials feared to be damaged, and a link between the library’s paper holdings and the electronic library launched by the Ministry. Having books on the shelves protects them, cataloging makes them discoverable, digitization expands access, and maintenance ensures their survival for future generations.
This is not a criticism of what the Ministry has achieved, but a call to complete it. The entity that has safeguarded this heritage over the past years is best positioned to move it from quiet preservation to active preservation, and from a memory dependent on the knowledge of its staff to an institutional memory that does not disappear with changes in personnel. The Ministry of Education has taken the causes of the library’s survival and thus deserves thanks. It is important that it complete its work through cataloging, maintenance, and digitization.
Books endure when institutions arise that recognize their value and take the necessary steps to preserve them. The Ministry of Education, which contributes to shaping Kuwait’s generations, deserves to preserve the memory of the journey that created those generations.
