Baghdad Teachers Open New Chapter

At the Socialist School， a secondary school for girls， teachers have swept classrooms， lined up broken desks， yanked down portraits of Saddam Hussein and whitewashed away his slogans， which once covered play ground walls.

Now， the teachers wait. They dont know when classed will begin again. They dont know whether students will brave the sporadic gunfire that echoes in the streets.

They dont know what books to use， what courses to teach， what the future will bring to a frayed education system in a country awaiting direction from U.S. troops and bureaucrats. They dont know whether another generation of students will be lost， not because they cannot learn but because nobody seems to know what to teach.

Stuck in a faded middle-class neighborhood near an expressway， the school is symbol of the old ways of the Iraqi system and the fresh dreams of a still-stunned country trying to adjust to the post-Saddam era.

Drawing 670 girls， ages 12 to 18， the 40-year-old school is rundown. There are no lights in the classrooms， there is no water in the taps. Some rooms are filled with desks. Others have only a few. Paint peels from walls and ceilings.

About 400 soldiers bunked in the classrooms during the war. They left a few slogans on the scuffed chalkboards， which are virtually unusable after many years of use.

Teachers earn less than US$5 a month. “We must rebuild，” said Sajeda Mahmood， an English teacher who speaks haltingly about the problems facing the school and Iraq. “Will we be like the Emirates？” she asked， hoping for oil riches to flow into the country， with new buildings and new lives. “Or will we be like Palestine？”

One thing is clear： The school and the education system need an overhaul.

USAID has awarded a contract to Washington-based Creative As so ci ates International Inc.， a professional services firm that has par tic i pat ed in similar efforts in several countries. Initially， a spokesman said， the company will concentrate on getting school supplies—pencils， paper， backpacks， chairs and blackboards.

Saddams regime used the schools to entrench the Baath Party ideology. Teachers said they had to be Baath Party members to get jobs and their students had to have party memberships to keep places in the school.

National culture textbooks were distributed from elementary school through high school. The books were citizenship primers for children in a totalitarian stare. On its cover， the 96-page version for secondary school students featured a drawing of an Iraqi soldier with an assault rifle. Inside were picture of Saddam visiting a hospital， dining with an Iraqi family and surveying weaponry.

“Martyrs are more honorable than all of us，” Saddam said in one quote featured in the military section titled “Defending the Country and Sacrificing for It.”

“He who does not sweat to build his country will not bleed defending it，” he said in another. The book tells why the Baath Party seized power from the old regime. Among the reasons， the old regime did not “open the way for Iraq to fight Zionism.”

Now the old order is gone. The teachers are preparing for the new one. The students have not been to school since March 19. The suffering can be seen in the state of disrepair in the school， the tattered books， the weathered look of an underpaid， overworked staff.

As Mahmood， the English teacher， took visitors into the classroom， she noticed one last poster that proclaimed in English， “Yes， Yes， Yes for the Leader Saddam Hussein.”

She ripped the poster from the wall and moved on.