The Phoenicians' affinity for education, innovative temperament, culture, and discipline enabled them to develop complex domains, like education. These fields were developed by this exceptional nation, which used Aramaic as their lingua franca; but they have also faced many grave challenges, genocides, and even risks of extinctions. As the combination of targeted subject(s) is/are complex and sensitive, this chapter focuses on the Semite-Phoenicians (SP) or today's Lebanese, their heritage, and the evolution of their specific diverse educational and multi-cultural system(s). SP's heritage, education, knowledge, and culture has spread throughout the world. SPs inhabited the MC that extended from Tyrus to the Nordic city of Tripoli. For more than six thousand years, Lebanon designates a region that has never changed its name. SP city states were avant-garde posts for their cultural expansion and these well-organized expansions brought them societal, economic successes. This chapter presents the ELDES in the context of the Lebanese societal transformation.
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Figure 1. Ancient SP’s alphabet-The Abjad
SPs have enriched civilizations by introducing: 1) A universal polymathic nation’s approach, where they are promoters of a global culture of exchange, communication, education, and development (Burke, 2010); 2) A broad networked world concept, as they experienced and learned to relate to other civilizations; 3) Openness, multilingualism, and diplomatic skills, and have shown the capacity to adapt to different nations, climates, and geographic environments; 4) Do not have an ethnocentric mentality and have a culture based on curiosity and knowledge; 5) Not confrontational; and 6) An environment of literacy, first alphabet(s) as shown in Figure 1, books (where the SP city of Byblos, means the Bible), libraries, mathematics, astrology, religions (SP’s religion is considered to be the origins of Christianity), inventions & discoveries, scientific creativity, philosophical, and mystical thinking. From their original region, which is shown in Figure 2, they formed a networked nation that lived off science, knowledge and they have spread global culture in the MEA, MC and all to the Atlantic Ocean’s coasts... and probably to the Americas. Semites are the first who gave tribes, the notion of a cultural identity in the regions in which they established their influence. SP’s expansion and culture are of the founders of MC’s and European cultures, and today we can still identify the continuity and evolution of SP’s influences on modern domains, like seafaring, agriculture, exchange, culture, and education. SP’s polymathic approach to education is based on their affinities (or cosmogony), and they are educators, leaders/managers, inventors, researches, discoverers, and a nation that is willing to offer/spread their knowledge (and skills). They developed important scientific skills and organizational capacities and methods that made them great engineers/instructors and educators/teachers in various fields of life, like mathematics, navigation, and other. These qualities can essentially influence the education of young people who want to become creative in engineering fields, production activities, navigation/trade, politics, and diplomacy (ACW, 2018). SPs evolved in the contexts of various empires, like the Greeks, Romans, Arabo-Muslim, Ottomans and others; and much of their heritage was absorbed, like in the cases of prominent scholars such as Archimedes, Pythagoras and many others (Orsingher, 2021). And this original MC multicultural mix has given the essence of what is called today the Greco-Roman West. In fact SP’s affinity for education is historical, and already in the 3rd Century (AD), they founded an international school of law and jurisprudence in Byrut, which was very appreciated, and it served various MC regions. The law school offered a combined curriculum that had various locations like, Byrut, Rome, or Constantinople (Phoenicia.org, 2022a). Such a curricula was applied to other fields like mathematics, astrology and other… And was SP’s approach to education, which can be considered as optimal for the development of competent cross-functional profiles, specialized in complex projects. Byrut has all the need CSFs to keep its educational hub and to enforce it, Lebanon must: 1) Establish a confederal system; 2) Integrate neutrality and distance itself from MEA’s conflicts, especially the ones related to Iran and Russia; 3) Educational secularity; 4) To become an example of Muslim, Christian, Jewish (and other religions/minorities) coexistence; and 5) Declare Byrut an open, peaceful (un-armed) modern cosmopolite City States (CS). Byrut and other Lebanese CSs were at the origin and epicentre of what today we call democracy.
Figure 2. Ancient SP’s region or habitat (ACW, 2018)