Rewriting the textbooks: education policy in post-Hussein Iraq.

Wang, Tina

British Liberal Henry Peter Brougham said in the 19th century, "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave." For decades, Saddam Hussein perverted this philosophy and exploited education as an instrument to maintain his government's iron grip on power in Iraq. Now, in an attempt to revive Brougham's pedagogical ideal, the United States hopes to make education the key to stable democratization in postwar Iraq.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The state of Iraq's school system is a microcosm of the state of Iraqi society during and after the rule of Hussein. For decades, Iraqi schoolbooks were replete with references to Hussein and schoolteachers served as trumpeters of government propaganda. Now, after the US-led war in Iraq, the school system is in shambles with looted school buildings, underpaid (and often under qualified) teachers, and a deadened 30-year-old curriculum. The United States has already begun an effort to reform the education system by purging school texts of all Hussein and Baath party references and bringing education experts from US school systems to serve as advisers in Iraq. Nevertheless, just as Brougham distinguished between "leading" and "driving," the United States must be vigilant in maintaining the distinction between liberation and occupation of Iraq's educational institution.

If the United States sees Iraqi education as merely a means for "winning the heart" of the Iraqi people, any changes to the Iraqi school system are likely to be superficial--cleansing schools of Hussein's domineering presence, renovating Iraqi school buildings, and Westernizing the Iraqi curriculum by incorporating democratic values. The stabilization of Iraqi society hinges on the fundamental restructuring and improvement of its education system. Before pursuing democratization, the United States should focus on securing the stability of Iraqi schools as a means of empowering the Iraqi people with the capacity to recreate their own society.

Emerging from a Troubled Past

When Hussein and the Baath party rose to power in the 1970s, the Iraqi education system became one of indoctrination. The clearest proof, by far, is found in the textbooks written during the period. According to a report by USA Today on October 2, 2003, a fifth grade Iraqi history textbook describes the 1991 Gulf War as "the Mother of all Battles launched by American and Zionist aggression and 30 nations." In mathematics during Hussein's rule, students learned multiplication tables by calculating the casualty count of shooting down four planes with three US pilots in each plane. Students were required to respond to the entrance of an adult in the classroom with "Long live the leader, Saddam Hussein," and began their school day by chanting against the United States for killing Iraqi children and burning Iraqi trees. In physical education classes, students exercised while reciting, "Bush, Bush, listen clearly: We all love Saddam." During flag-raising ceremonies, a teacher fired a round of blanks from an AK-47 rifle to the Hussein chants of students. According to a New York Times article on October 1, 2003, an elementary school teacher at the Tigris School for Girls in Baghdad said of Hussein, "We had to include him in every lesson plan or we'd be in trouble with the Baath Party."

After the US-led war in Iraq ousted Hussein, the United States honed in on the domineering presence of Hussein in Iraqi education and rushed to give the schools a "facelift" before four million Iraqi children returned to school in October 2003. The Governing Council, which consists of 25 members appointed by the United States, decreed a purge of all references to Hussein from the education system. Under a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Iraqi officials and teachers tore out images of the former Iraqi ruler and crossed out references to him and the Baath party in millions of textbooks. Iraq and neighboring countries printed millions of newly edited books. The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also produced new math and science texts with blank pages substituting for references to Hussein. Physical improvements accompanied the cleansing of the curriculum. The US military and Iraqis repaired and restored school buildings severely damaged by years of neglect, by the US-led war, and by postwar looters. The US-led interim government boasts of progress in more than 1,000 of Iraq's 13,000 schools.

Challenges Ahead

In the same way that many Iraqis initially reacted to the US toppling of Hussein by destroying Hussein images and monuments or by celebrating the US military's removal of his tributes, some Iraqi children and teachers cheered the purge of Hussein's presence from the schools. Some students tore out pictures of Hussein and threw their books out the window, and teachers expressed relief that they would no longer have to tailor their teaching to government propaganda. For others, however, the process of discarding old practices and adjusting to change proved difficult. Some students, for example, have held on to the old habit of chanting Hussein sayings, and many teachers have been unsure about how to shape the curriculum when the only teaching system they know is the vestige of Hussein's rule. If the state of Iraqi society is any indication, the removal of Hussein's images, censorship of references to Hussein from school texts, and new coatings of paint will not be enough to improve the education system.

Just as the infrastructure of Iraqi society, which had been on shaky foundations even before Hussein's fall, collapsed with the US occupation, so may the structure and foundations of the Iraqi school system. Since Iraqi schools reflect an Iraqi society struggling with the aftermath of war, the transition from dictatorship to self-government, and between seeing the US presence as "liberation" or "occupation," the US project on Iraqi education cannot be purely symbolic. Reform must also focus on long-term problems: securing the safety and stability of schools, restructuring the school system, reforming the process of training and hiring teachers, increasing parental involvement, reducing overcrowding, and shifting the curriculum from one of memorization and regurgitation to one of analytic and creative thinking.

Over the summer of 2004, the White House assembled a team of educators, most notably acting director of the Ministry of Education's curriculum department, Abdul-Zahra Abbas, who went to Baghdad to advise Iraqis on the rebuilding of their school system. The prominent US representatives in the group included Texas Education Commissioner Jim Nelson, Leslye Arsht, founder of Standards Work, and Bill Evers, scholar of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. All have had strong experience with US education reform, but not with international work.

In Iraq, however, as in the United States, many of the needs and problems are the same. "There are some universal truths in education," Arsht told the Dallas Morning News. "In some ways, educators here are just like ones back home." Yet, in an editorial in a US newspaper, an Iraqi-born US resident and public school teacher wrote, "To work, the system must reflect the interests of the Iraqis. While I do not object to having some components of the US education system integrated, it should not be a replica of what the United States has."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A Plan of Action

Hoping to realize their vision for Iraq's future through education, US officials have removed the class on "Patriotic Education" from the Iraqi curriculum and added classes on human rights and democracy. But the first priority of the United States ought to be helping to strengthen the school system before promoting values through it. Otherwise, the Americanization of the school system will run the larger risk of making the Iraqi people resent the US presence even more than they already do.

Some US advisers have since left Iraq, though promising to strengthen ties between Iraqi and US schools. Aladin Alwan, a former official from the World Health Organization, has been appointed to take over Iraq's Ministry of Education, and on March 31, 2004, he announced that the national curriculum will teach students how Hussein and the Baath party ruled the Iraqi people by repression. But there are long-term problems to which the United States must commit in order to truly improve Iraqi education.

First, the United States must make it safe for Iraqi children to go to school, which means securing Iraqi residential areas. About a quarter of Iraq's 14.5 million children do not attend school. According to an October 15, 2004 article in Agence France Presse, 3.6 million children were documented as enrolled in primary school in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2000, as compared to the 4.3 million Iraqi children now. While parents are willing to send their children to school, the problem is that there are not enough schools. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates, around 5,000 new schools should be built to accommodate overcrowding as some classrooms usually hold 70 or more students.

Another problem is that parents are immensely concerned with their children's safety in going to school. Walla Faik, a 17-year-old student at Baghdad Girls' Secondary School, located in a wealthy Mansour neighborhood, told the Los Angeles Times in an October 2, 2003 article, "I think my dad will drive me here every day, and watch me walk into the gate." Although Iraqi police have been deployed, street crime, carjackings, and assaults are still widespread. In Baghdad, many women and girls are fearful of venturing outside.

The insecurity has led world organizations to reduce their involvement in Iraq as well, which has adversely affected Iraqi education. After the deadly bombing of its Baghdad headquarters, the United Nations cut back on its staff, and UNICEF and UNESCO have retreated further, contributing to the delay in the production of new textbooks for schools. The United States must make a long-term commitment to ensure the security of Iraqi streets, homes, and schools.

Second, the United States must improve the fundamental structure of the school system, which means first reforming the process of training, hiring, and paying teachers in order to increase teacher quality and parental involvement in lieu of government influence. Many Iraqi teachers have known no system other than the Baathist ideology they have taught under for decades, so they will need to be trained in modern methods of teaching. Moreover, dismally low teaching salaries will surely have to be raised if talented and committed teachers are to perceive the Iraqi school system as legitimate. Indeed, the interim government recognized that the low pay of teachers was contributing to a widespread bribe system, where students paid teachers for good grades. It raised administrators' and teachers' salaries ten to 20 times; some teachers that earned US$5 a month now earn US$60 a month, while an administrator may earn up to US$100.

Similarly, parental involvement could help fill the vacuum left by the purge of Baathist teachers and administrators. Under the old regime, parents were not allowed to play a role in their children's education for fear that they would confront teachers and, by doing so, question Baathist ideology. In the past, the school administration could have blacklisted the parents of children considered "hostile" or "anti-regime."

Finally, the United States must aid in the liberation of the Iraqi curriculum, which has not been reviewed or modernized for decades. Iraqi education has been limited to government-imposed education practices, which are heavily focused on memorization, recitation, and regurgitation of information. Hussein considered the Ministry of Education an important branch of government for the Baath party and used education as a means of ensuring the loyalty and obedience of the youth to the government, particularly those born after he came to power in 1979.

The curriculum left no room for students to develop critical and analytical thinking skills or to engage in debate and discussions. The creativity and innovativeness of teachers and students have been stifled. Leslye Arsht, US adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Education, told the Boston Globe in an October 1, 2003 article, "Twenty years ago, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the region. But teachers have been starved of information for years."

More Questions to Address

After the United States has helped to improve and strengthen the structure and state of Iraq's education system, there will be other questions that will need to be addressed. According to a May 1, 2003 op-ed in the New York Sun, a challenge is creating an education system that factors in Iraq's volatile mix of factions and ethnicities, its subpopulations of Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turks, and other groups.

Some might argue for a pluralistic, "perhaps federal-style education system" based on local control, rather than one administered from a central education ministry. Others might emphasize the importance of a standardized curriculum and common institution to strengthen a sense of nationhood.

The United States and international organizations must also be sensitive to the question of choosing an Islamic versus secular education. In 2003, Education Minister Alwan condemned the attempt by USAID to prohibit references to Islam including verses from the Quran in the education materials it funded, according to the Financial Times.

US officials might want to substitute modern science for religious fundamentalism in the school curriculum, but the Iraqi people might call for an education system that reflects the strong religious influence in society. Such a dialogue as this could be included in national discussions about which education practices will be the most successful in moving Iraqi society further along.

Other issues that will emerge in a reform of the Iraqi education system are the demographics of the children enrolled in schools, the quality of universities, and the role of private and foreign schools. According to the Agence France Presse, UNICEF has called attention to the significantly lower enrollment rates of girls as compared to boys in Iraqi schools. Alwan, according to the Agence France Presse in a January 3, 2004 article, announced the education of women as a goal in the four-year project to develop Iraqi schools. According to Alwan, only half of the girls in rural areas are getting an education.

After Iraq's primary education system has been rehabilitated, the state of Iraqi higher education must be vastly improved as well. College classrooms were also not immune to the waves of looting that occurred after the US-led strike on Iraq. According to a July 12, 2004 article in the Chicago Sun-Times, an Iraqi professor at university in Baghdad explained how to use a microscope to second- and third-year chemistry students, who had never used a microscope before.

Prospects for an alternative Iraqi education may also lie in the system of private and foreign schools that was reportedly approved by the Iraqi Governing Council in Iraq's newspaper, Al Zamman. In a country that has isolated itself, a discussion of challenges and possibilities so nascent in Iraqi society has not taken place for decades. The United States has helped Iraqis initiate small steps in the overhaul of Iraqi schools, but it must commit to the long-term modernization of Iraqi education, a commitment that will be just as long-term as the rebuilding of the rest of Iraqi society.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

RELATED ARTICLE: MOUNTING TROUBLES

The figure above shows the literacy rates in two different years among Iraqi males and females ages 15 and over. The percentage of the Iraqi population that is able to read and write declined significantly over the five year period. What is especially notable is the drop in the percentage of literate females from 45 percent in 1995 to 24.4 percent in 2003.

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

CIA World Factbook

staff writer

TINA WANG