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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (12376)	4/11/2003 9:25:40 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 21614

X, ever consider relocating??? U.S. Set to Boot Saddam Out of Iraqi Classroom Fri April 11, 2003 04:01 PM ET By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States wants to get politics out of the classroom in Iraq where devotion to toppled leader Saddam Hussein dominated the curriculum, say several Iraqi scholars helping to draft a new school system. Revising textbooks that overtly touted Saddam and his policies and rebuilding Iraq's crumbling schools is one of the many projects planned by the Bush administration when the fighting is over and the reconstruction phase begins. Since January -- two months before the war began -- exiled Iraqi scholars in the United States and education experts have been working on plans to restructure Iraqi schools as part of an Education Working Group arranged by the State Department's Future of Iraq office. "One of the aims is to completely expunge or clean up the school text books from all of Saddam's propaganda," said Hind Rassam Culhane, an Iraqi-American included on the team. "The goal is to provide textbooks that are devoid of Baath Party ideology," added Culhane, a social scientist from Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Exiled Iraqi scholars say apart from ridding classrooms of propaganda, Iraq's schools also suffer from a dire lack of supplies and more than two-thirds of buildings need repair. According to the United Nations, one-quarter of school-aged Iraqi children do not attend class and increasingly have stayed away from school to help supplement their family's income. NEW TEACHING METHODS Another adviser, Iraqi exile Zainab al-Suwaij, said the method of teaching in Iraq had to be changed from one of rote learning to one where children were taught to question and to tolerate others. "When I went to school it was not really school but to serve a propaganda purpose," said al-Suwaij, who fled to America in 1992 and is now executive director of the American Islamic Congress. She recalled how as a student in Iraq she was continually given pro-Saddam banners and sent onto the streets to chant slogans supporting the Iraqi leader and his government. "If we tried to escape from these demonstrations, they would whip us," she said, adding that Saddam's leadership was celebrated in all aspects of school from poetry to history. But Al-Suwaij said it was key the United States did not impose its own values on Iraq's education system and that the responsibility should be handed over to the Iraqis themselves. Culhane agreed and suggested the committee and a future education department should study a wide range of educational models that could suit Iraq. "The American model may sound great to us but it does not mean that it will fit Iraq, which first had a British model and later a Soviet-style system," she said. Another Iraqi exile on the education group, Edward Odisho, said he was working on a multilingual curriculum, moving away from the current system where Arabic was used. "Thirty percent of the population in Iraq speak a language other than Arabic and if we are really talking about building a democracy and replacing the regime then we have to be fair to all the people," he said. Washington-based Creative Associates International, awarded a comparable project in Afghanistan, is the favorite to win a U.S. Agency for International Development contract which would include curriculum changes and teacher training. USAID spokesman Alfonso Aguilar said once the contract had been handed out, a full assessment would be made of Iraq's schools and work would be done closely with a new Iraqi education ministry when it was in place. "We want to make sure that the school system the Iraqis have will respond to the democratic system I am sure they will wish to establish," he said. "In terms of text books we will make sure to provide text books that are reliable and useful to students. In no way or form are we trying to impose anything," he said. Whatever decisions are taken to change Iraq's schools, Culhane voiced strong concern about the mental health of Iraq's school children, both because of Saddam's oppression and due to the trauma of the war. "My relatives tell me their children have been unable to sleep at night because of the roar of bombs and they have seen unbearable things on the streets," she said, adding that dealing with this trauma should be an aspect of a new system. reuters.com