Curiosity Lost: The Dilemma of the Educational System in Iraq

"Did curiosity really kill the cat?!" Or was the cat a victim of someone else's curiosity, as is the case in Iraq? I am not going to speak of cats or other felines but of an aspect of the educational system in Iraq. Yet, what is the link between felines and education. Absolutely, there is nothing at all in common between the two. However, on a closer inspection it becomes clear that the meeting point lies in the learning habits imposed by the Iraqi educational system, which is blighted by every sort of ineffectiveness and inflexibility. From the prep school up to the higher studies, the curricula are rigidly prescribed and superimposed and the student is discouraged to develop their inquisitive faculties. What I want to discuss here is part of the problem facing the educationalists in Iraq, namely the manner in which the educational matter was taught in schools and universities in Iraq during Saddam’s regime. It is of paramount importance to notice the rapid degeneration of the educational body and its far reaching and serious effects which are endangering the national security and the public welfare.

Throughout his reign (of terror), the former regime worked so hard to undermine the educational system in Iraq in a dirty attempt to produce an illiterate, unenlightened Iraqi citizen that can be easily and readily manipulated and bamboozled. How to do that? Many plans were contrived, and dozens of schemes were plotted to carry out that wicked objective with malice aforethought. After the Gulf War, teachers underwent sever conditions of deprivation and want. Their salaries were drastically reduced and their social position was consequently destroyed. The student thinks nothing of the teacher, the teacher needs the student, and corruption ate traumatically into the educational institution. Teachers were disgraced and degraded as a corollary.

In addition, pre- and in-service training of teachers was neglected to abandonment. Teaching aids were also dispensed with, and new approaches to teaching were shelved. Disqualified, stopgap teachers were introduced finishing a six-month course of study to make up for the sever shortage in teaching cadre. Lack of experience and teaching expertise widened the gulf between the student and the teacher, the teacher and society.

However, the danger lurked in the way the teaching material was introduced to the student. Ministerial examinations were extended to include all the study stages. The results were across-the-board and detrimental. In other words, the teacher had no freedom to expatiate on the study material and no time to answer the students' questions and queries. "There are too many students in the room, there is a schedule to be followed and material to be covered, and time is too short." Curiosity was killed in birth before it develops into a creative and critical thinking that might undermine the political institution! Attention was oriented towards the quantity rather than to the quality of the material and the successful techniques that can be manipulated to impart knowledge to its seekers. Boredom prevailed and swept the educational atmosphere. Teachers left the country for more payment and peace of mind, the number of drop-outs increased like anything when armies of students quit the study and left the schools to work as shoe-makers, bag-sellers in the popular markets, and, if lucky, as taxi drivers.

We are now in dire need to consider and rethink of that educational system, excuse the word system. It is now our opportunity and responsibility, as educationalists, to find the best ways to create a uniquely new Iraqi character that respond to the demands and challenges of the present period, and is able to take up the responsibility it is called upon to shoulder. We want a generation that begins to pose questions and not to take things for their face value. The old regimes' common sense and taken-for-granted assumptions should be interrogated and challenged. The teacher should be given their due and respect, the student should regain their curiosity and inquisitiveness.