Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Iraqi schools mirror the war around them

By Susanne Fischer
September 09, 2007 6:00 AM
BAGHDAD — While students across America return to their classrooms, the
education system in Iraq is nearing total collapse, according to teachers,
parents and government officials.
"Education in Baghdad's schools is a joke," said Ali Abdul-Hussein, 35,
who pulled his two children out of school due to fears for their security.
"The ministry of education can't provide education or protection for our
children."
The challenges facing the capital's school system seem almost overwhelming.
Parents, fearful that their children will be kidnapped or attacked on
their way to class, often accompany them to school. Some wait there all
day so they can bring their children home safely.
Parents often beg administrators to allow their children to transfer to
schools in districts they perceive as more peaceful.
Meanwhile, educators complain it's almost impossible to teach in such a
violent environment. Bombings and neighborhood violence lead many students
to miss classes.
Those who do attend, traumatized by the more than four years of war,
sometime exhibit behavioral problems in the classroom.
With approximately 600 teachers killed across the country during the past
academic year, many educators simply refuse to go to work.
In some neighborhoods, the violence has forced some schools to shut down
for months at a time.
"Terrorists, extremist Islamists and supporters of the former regime are
targeting educational institutions in Baghdad and Iraq," said Falah
al-Qureishi, an education ministry spokesman. "They are trying to disrupt
education and instill fear in students and teachers so that they will no
longer go to school."
Despite assigning interior ministry security staff to protect some
schools, many say the past academic year was a failure in Baghdad.
Some worry that an entire generation of Iraqis may be lost because of the
meltdown in the education system.
There are more than 21,000 schools in Baghdad. UNICEF Special
Representative for Iraq Roger Wright noted that Iraq once boasted the best
educational systems in the Middle East.
Today, however, many schools are in disrepair, lacking water, power and
sanitation facilities.
UNICEF made the reconstruction of Iraq's crumbling schools one of its top
priorities following the overthrow of former president Saddam Hussein. But
instead, the agency has been forced to devote its resources to aiding the
tens of thousands of refugees who have been displaced by the sectarian
violence.
With so much violence going on around them, educators say the idea of
maintaining discipline in schools has all but vanished.
Shamil Abdullah, headmaster of al-Quds Secondary School, likens his
facility to a ticking bomb ready to explode at any moment. The teaching
staff, he said, has become almost as unruly as the students.
"There are two rooms in my school for the teachers, one for Sunni and the
other for Shia," he said.
"They seldom meet without squabbling over the political situation in Iraq,
so I decided to separate them to ease the tension."
Abdullah said the school has been forced to shut down several times after
receiving threats that it was about to be attacked. He was unsure,
however, whether the threats actually came from insurgents or the students
themselves.
Meanwhile, students feel they can run roughshod over the staff. Jasim
Saeed, a 19-year-old senior at the school, said he and his classmates have
no qualms about thumbing their noses at school staff, sometimes using
empty classrooms to view pornographic videos or smoke.
Teachers said they're reluctant to punish students out of fear of
retribution from the pupils' families.
Rather than risk sending their children to schools, some families have
resorted to home schooling or hiring private tutors.
Hind Abdulla, a 45-year-old Sunni, hired a private tutor last year so her
daughter could complete her final year of high school and apply for
admission to a university.
"The problem I had was finding a teacher from our own religious sect," she
said. "Shia teachers refuse to teach Sunni students, and vice versa."
Susanne Fischer is the country director in Iraq for The Institute for War
& Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in
areas of conflict.
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