If you have scrolled through eBay, Amazon, or niche Middle Eastern book collector forums recently, you have likely seen the screenshots. A ninth-grade English as a Second Language (ESL) textbook, officially published by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education circa 2016–2018, appears to feature a green, misshapen figure uttering grammatical nonsense. Collectors are paying top dollar—sometimes upwards of $500 USD—for mint condition copies.
For a Star Wars fan, this is comedic gold. For a 14-year-old Saudi student trying to pass a standardized test, it was linguistic torture. saudi arabia yoda textbook for sale
In 2017, a Saudi high school social studies textbook mistakenly included a doctored photograph of King Faisal signing the United Nations Charter in 1945, with Jedi Master Yoda seated beside him. If you have scrolled through eBay, Amazon, or
To make the textbooks "engaging," the publishers hired a team of freelance illustrators and scriptwriters from Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. According to a whistleblower who spoke to Middle East Eye in 2019 (under a pseudonym, fearing legal retaliation), the writing team was given a single instruction: "Make dialogues that are funny and use inversion for emphasis." For a Star Wars fan, this is comedic gold
All play on the idea that foreign education systems are quirky or unsophisticated enough to include cartoon characters in official curricula.