Iraqi schools turning away from being secular

[a_unique_person]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6125357/

Iraqi schools turn away from secular teachings
Religious fundamentalism takes root after Saddam
By Richard Engel
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 8:59 p.m. ET Sept. 28, 2004

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."

Don't know if I agree with that. Being an atheist, I don't like to see any large regression back to fundamentalism. I would never rule against anyone's right to practice their own religion if it complies with just laws, but Iraq is just sliding headlong back into fundamentalism as far as I can see. The US may have created exactly the opposite of what it had intended with this invasion.

An interesting conrast to Indonesia, a Muslim country, that has just held peaceful and successful democratic elections for the position of President.

 

[Tony]

Fu**in idiots. But I guess I can't really blame them, how else are you suppose to train the next generation of suicide bombers? Put a towel on your head, strap a bomb on your body and praise allah.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Lol. Just like Yugoslavia. Remove the dictatorship, and ethnic warfare and rampant religionism thrive. Sad to think that force was the only thing keeping some places from plunging back into the dark ages.

Oh, well, what can you do if people willingly choose the idiotic course? It's like we're watching a whole country decide to go on the Atkin's diet.