By Omar Al-Hadithi ~
Mariam, 12 years old, raises her hand in a bright Najaf classroom to pose a question—not rote repetition, but because she is curious. Her teacher, Farah Abdulamir, smiles and nods for her to go on. “We are not memorizing the answers here,” she says. “We are learning to think.”
This is fantasy in the classroom of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi teenagers a decade ago. War-torn, frayed, and abandoned textbooks, Iraq’s state school system for years has been its weakest link. Blackboards are being replaced by lit screens and lecturing by teaching in Basra and Erbil today.
Iraq is going through a deep but unreported learning revolution—and it’s at the top, and at the bottom.
From Crisis to Reform
Government institutions were not in chaos until the year 2003 when the US occupation tore down Iraq’s education system. It demolished schools or shelled them, iced up to scatter teachers’ resources, and let runaway dropout rates roll. Only in 2018 did Iraqi out-of-school children consist of only 3.2 million, reports UNESCO.
Reforms:
Reform brings everything around.
With the Ministry of Education 2021 Strategic Framework, Iraq has been working tirelessly to construct teacher professionalization and re-engineer the curriculum, not to mention schools. With assistance from global players in the disguise of the World Bank and UNICEF, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics lessons, computer science, and child-focused pilot schemes are already starting to pay dividends.
Reform is out of Iraq’s budget to accomplish, Baghdad Ministry of Education education adviser Dr. Zainab Al-Khafaji stated. “It’s for the economic future and social life of Iraq.”.
At Mosul’s Al-Ameen Primary school, the students were recently provided tablets under a new scheme under the World Bank’s “Education Sector Reform Project.” Mathematics and science are being imparted to students through activity-based learning on game-based learning portals in Kurdish- and Arabic-language. It has been magic for Mahmoud Jibouri.
“Children were just copying off the board earlier. Now they’re doing projects in groups, testing, and posing questions. They’re more self-assured,” he continues.
Internet is still patchy—particularly where it is war and in the countryside—but solar schools and mobile schools fill in the gaps and blanks. In a standard model in Anbar province, a convoy of education buses supported by an NGO fills in for roving teachers’ schools, textbooks, and internet in rural countryside proxies.
Empowering Educators
Equipped with this revolution are Iraqi teachers. Teachers previously had less than a decade and half years ago and even less in Gulf War prepublications and publications. Teachers nowadays are learning new curriculums, computer codes, and survival skills.
These include the new “Teaching for Tomorrow” school, which was inaugurated in partnership with the European Union. Iraqi educators were trained online and gathered once a month to perform workshops, and there were thousands of them who studied about active learning, evaluating students, and pedagogic sensitivity to trauma, all of which will be demanded from societies that came out of psychological trauma because of war not long ago.
“I taught them to identify stress at an early stage,” is what Zahraa Tameemi, an intermediate school teacher, can provide. “Now I don’t teach them, I guide them.”
A Young People’s Movement
It’s theirs, that of the Iraqi youths themselves, policy or not.
Yasser Al-Mansouri started a pandemic club in his garage when he was 17. It started with three members, but the club is now an after-school club with over 60 members.
“I never thought we simply had to sit around and just do nothing and allow things to go by.” “Our status had to be changed because we have to change,” he continues. His group is now working with local universities in expanding mentorship and literacy to the poor.
And, as well, initiatives such as Al-Taqwa Foundation for Development launching girls’ computer clubs, science fairs, and mobile libraries in southern Iraq—challenge and opportunity when institutions fall behind.
There are still challenges yet ahead of the future and defying progress. There are overcrowded classrooms, regional disparities, and political unrest. But the momentum cannot be halted.
References
