Muhammad is a graduate of Hands-on-Learning, a modest project aiming to drive down drop-out rates in Ras al Khaimah, one of the scruffier of the seven statelets that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is but one local effort to solve a sweeping regional problem. Across the Arab world, girls are less likely than boys to be at school. But in the classroom girls vastly outperform their male peers—to a degree unmatched anywhere else in the world. Boys’ shockingly bad school marks are a big drag on Arab economies, as is the continuing oppression of females. Shoddy boys’ schools are turning out insecure young men who are more likely to feel that their livelihoods depend on keeping better-educated women out of work.
