BAGHDAD - Four-year-old Beytool Hamid is going to school for the first time, but it's a very different school than her brothers and sisters attended.
Under Saddam, schools were militarized and secular. To revitalize the education system, the U.S. has spent $225 million to renovate 2,400 of Iraq's 18,000 schools, print nine million new textbooks and retrain one in 10 teachers.
Still, many Iraqis are opting out of the public school system.
Under Saddam, Beytool's school was only allowed to teach the strict, state-approved curriculum. But now, it's a private school and they are free to teach whatever they like. And in a sign of the changing times here, the focus is now overwhelmingly on Islamic education. Instead of teaching the alphabet, the goal in Beytool's class is to memorize 28 basic verses from the Koran, and learn how to wash before prayers.
The school's director says: "the most important thing for a child to know is religion."
At universities too, religious hard-liners are taking hold — at Baghdad's Mustansiriya, self-appointed morality police now guard the campus gate. They recently sent a grad student away because she was wearing pants.
The director of Iraq's education ministry opposes the fundamentalist trend.
"Radicals are trying to use their new freedom to deny the freedom of others," says Dr. Ala al-Din Alwan.
But he admits the chaos makes it difficult to control.
And the government has no control over hundreds of Shiite religious seminaries — known as the Howza — teaching Islamic theory and law once banned under Saddam.
Toka al-Khafagi dropped out of Baghdad University to attend the Howza.
"I wanted to learn about the roots of my faith," Khafagi says. "Now I can."
Critics say the rigid Howza curriculum has its shortcomings.
"What we risk having 10 or 15 years down the line is an absence of lawyers, an absence of technicians, doctors, engineers who are able to push the country forward," says Middle East analyst Turi Munthe.
The battle is under way for the minds of Iraq's future generation.
Yay using US money to indoctrinate Iraqi schoolchildren in Islam. I'm glad the schoolchildren and university students have all sorts of religious freedom (morality police) now.
-Chris Marks Justice League
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
This is not a surprise in the least. Now that Saddam is gone, it is only natural for the religious leaders in Iraq, who Saddam kept in check, to take over.
The Kernel wrote:This is not a surprise in the least. Now that Saddam is gone, it is only natural for the religious leaders in Iraq, who Saddam kept in check, to take over.
Pity he didn't execute them all.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
My ideal solution: require that everybody who is educated outside the (presumably secular) public schools meet some standards of literacy, math, and science knowledge, or they get transferred to public school.
Meanwhile, back in reality: Iraq seems more like an intractible shithole every day. I just want to get the hell out of there forever, and help Iraqis who want to get out too.
Does this suprise anyone? Our own government has been pushing to 'put God back in the schools' for decades now.
Yeah you are right about that, but, it makes me angry that I've heard Bush say that the people of Iraq now enjoy "religious freedoms," when it seems that they have actually taken a step backwards.
-Chris Marks Justice League
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
Marksist wrote:Yeah you are right about that, but, it makes me angry that I've heard Bush say that the people of Iraq now enjoy "religious freedoms," when it seems that they have actually taken a step backwards.
*smack*
Freedom of religion is just that. The freedom of religion to do whatever the fuck it wants. Making women hide their faces, training a whole new generation of hatemongers, dooming a nation into scientific and technological stagnation. Religion couldn't do that if it wasn't free, could it?
Lazy Raptor wrote:Freedom of religion is just that. The freedom of religion to do whatever the fuck it wants. Making women hide their faces, training a whole new generation of hatemongers, dooming a nation into scientific and technological stagnation. Religion couldn't do that if it wasn't free, could it?
Excuse my quoting of a religious saying, but you'd think the writing was on the wall.
The most basic assumption about the world is that it does not contradict itself.
What a fucking shock. No doubt the administration will excuse this the same way they excuse all their other fuck-ups in Iraq: "Well no one could've predicted that it would get this bad."
I predicted it! So did tons of other people! Do I understand the Muslim culture more than the president's top aids?
Damien Sorresso
"Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit."
- The Onion
Well there is nothing wrong with teaching Islam in classes. Many muslim countries have a religious studies topic in their school syllabous. But concentrating on Islam as the primary subject in a secular school is not right. If the students want mainly religious education they should go to a Madrashah where religious education is the main goal. It is not good to turn secular schools into Madrashahs.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Anyway, I've said it before...and unfortunately, it seems I'm likely to be saying it again. Religion is the antithesis of knowledge and education, it is a polar fucking opposite*. Religion is based on the idea of being told "X is true" knowledge is based on the search for what is true not being handed it.
Unfortunately, a lot of education these days is far too close to the indoctronation of religion to properly demonstrate to the lowest common denomenator how fundamental this problem is...
* - In this there are certain religions which get to escape being quite so bad, but all those of the abrahamic tradition are at the front of the "Most Wanted" list for this shit.
"Prodesse Non Nocere." "It's all about popularity really, if your invisible friend that tells you to invade places is called Napoleon, you're a loony, if he's called Jesus then you're the president." "I'd drive more people insane, but I'd have to double back and pick them up first..." "All it takes for bullshit to thrive is for rational men to do nothing." - Kevin Farrell, B.A. Journalism. BOTM - EBC - Horseman - G&C - Vampire
Under Saddam, schools were militarized and secular. To revitalize the education system, the U.S. has spent $225 million to renovate 2,400 of Iraq's 18,000 schools, print nine million new textbooks and retrain one in 10 teachers.
Still, many Iraqis are opting out of the public school system.
Under Saddam, Beytool's school was only allowed to teach the strict, state-approved curriculum. But now, it's a private school and they are free to teach whatever they like. And in a sign of the changing times here, the focus is now overwhelmingly on Islamic education. Instead of teaching the alphabet, the goal in Beytool's class is to memorize 28 basic verses from the Koran, and learn how to wash before prayers.
Hear that, Georgie-Boy? These people don't want Western democracy. They want Islam.
Damien Sorresso
"Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit."
- The Onion
Talon Karrde wrote:And this is unexpected? It's a muslim country, it's not to shocking that they'd teach that in theiro own schools.
Obviously, you are too stupid to realize the potential problems inherent in allowing the rise of another Taliban. Either that or you're admitting that disaster in Iraq was to be expected, in which case you would be conceding that Bush is a complete imbecile.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
What makes me wonder is why the US isn't providing more supervision to the Iraqi Education Ministry in order to ensure that they enforce the state curriculum and ensure separation of church and state. Are they that eager to allow the Iraqis to control their children's future?
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
They can't even control or thoroughly occupy the bloody country, you really think telling some powerless subordinate what should be done will have any effect?
Talon Karrde wrote:And this is unexpected? It's a muslim country, it's not to shocking that they'd teach that in theiro own schools.
So you acknowledge that Bush's mission to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq is a fool's errand?
No, he's saying that having an established state religion is freedom and even if it's not Christianity (aka the one true faith), it's still better than having some godless, secular government running the show.
Talon Karrde wrote:And this is unexpected? It's a muslim country, it's not to shocking that they'd teach that in theiro own schools.
Yes, you know, we also have religion classes at school, but unlike there ours aren't seen as top priority as compraed to, say, math, writing and reading as it seems there. With an education system like that they are on the best way to become a future-less shithole soon enough, and guess on who they are going to blame that: America and the world-wide Jewish conspiracy...
