July 1, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 30, 1424

BAGHDAD: After removing Saddam Hussein from power, the United States is now expunging him from Iraqi school textbooks and purging Baath Party ideology from the curriculum.

The overhaul is part of a US effort to demilitarise an education system that has upheld martial virtues and taught children to be ready to die for Saddam.

“We will keep the same textbooks for this academic year and the next after removing parts that deal with Saddam and his Baath Party,” said Bassam al-Ani, head of the Education Ministry’s textbooks department.

“Photos of Saddam were removed from all textbooks as well as his speeches and poems in praise of him,” he said.

“The subject of ‘nationalist education’ has been suspended. Materials concerning the former regime have been removed from history and geography textbooks,” Ani said.

The US adviser to the Education Ministry was unavailable for comment, but Geoffrey Keele, spokesman for the UN Children’s Fund, said all Iraqi textbooks would have to be overhauled, as even science books were riddled with propaganda.

He cited maths books in which pupils are told the length and the width of a Saddam picture and asked to find its area.

“Eventually, all the textbooks will be changed, whether it is maths or Arabic language and I imagine sciences as well,” he said, adding that new books would be ready by 2005 after consultations involving many groups of Iraqis.

Keele said existing books, with some revisions but keeping the “solid learning content”, would be used in the meantime.

The old textbooks devote much space to Saddam and the Baath Party, including passages celebrating the achievements of the July 17 Revolution that brought the Party to power in 1968.

Keele said the school curriculum had not been revised for two decades and teaching methods were just as outdated.

The education ministry, the US-led administration, and UN agencies have been working out a reform plan.

“What we want to do is participatory learning, which is engaging the children in problem-solving and engaging them in the process of education so that they develop all kinds of skills, not just memorisation,” Keele said.

Education under Saddam amounted to a systematic brainwashing from elementary school onward. Students learned to obey, not think. Even their extra-curricular activities centred on Baath party ideology and loyalty to Saddam.

Schools operated on a rigid system based on rote learning. Teachers, all Baath Party members, were stern task masters.

The curriculum was crafted to inculcate extreme nationalism and love for Saddam at an early age. Students were continually given pro-Saddam banners and sent onto the streets to chant slogans supporting him and his government.

“Saddam was present in every textbook. He gazes on you the moment you open the book. He is there in the books of history, geography, literature and even in English language textbooks,” said Ahmed Tahseen, a teacher in a Baghdad elementary school.

All the textbooks start with Saddam’s picture, followed by the message: “The book in your hand is the revolution’s gift to you, thus preserving it is part of loyalty to the revolution.”

Iraqi educators believe strongly that the United States should not dictate change, but support and advise them as they seek to make their own reform to befit a post-Saddam Iraq.

“The Americans should not impose their own values on Iraq’s education system,” said Ali Khalid, a retired teacher.

Keele said UNICEF endorsed the view that Iraqis should determine what their children are going to learn. “It is not something that you force on people,” he added.

Iraq’s education system once ranked among the best in the Arab world, producing a high literacy rate and a large middle class of professionals. It is now in a sorry state.

Poor governance, three wars in two decades and 13 years of UN sanctions have left 6,000 to 7,000 schools with no glass in the windows, no electricity and no functioning toilets.

“Currently the education system in Iraq is very dilapidated. It is decayed. The whole education system is suffering from a lack of investment,” Keele said.

Iraqi schools suffered further damage during the US-led invasion launched on March 20. Iraqi forces used some schools to store munitions. US forces commandeered several schools as barracks. Some schools were bombed and many more were looted.—Reuters