What Is School Really Like for Kids in Iraq? Answers To Common Questions
The ping came through my contact form at 8:17 last Tuesday, while I was picking at cold leftover mac and cheese and grading a stack of 4th grade reading quizzes. The note was short, typed with only a few typos: Helo I’m from iraq ask questions about schools in my country. I’m 16, applying for exchange program to Canada, they want me to talk about my school. What do people outside usually ask? I want to tell the truth.
I’ve been part of a global educator peer network for three years, so I get questions like this a handful of times a year. Most of them come from educators and parents in North America and Europe who want to understand more about the Iraqi students joining their classrooms, but sometimes they come from young people in Iraq like this 16-year-old from Basra, who want to know what outsiders are curious about before they share their own stories. I pulled up the list of questions I’ve been asked most over the last three years, and started sorting through the stories that go with each to send back to her.
The first question almost everyone asks is: Do kids even go to school regularly? It makes sense, because almost all the coverage most people see of Iraq is focused on conflict and instability. I remember my first zoom call with Noor, a 3rd grade teacher in Baghdad, two years ago. She propped her phone on a chipped wooden desk, and behind her 28 kids in crisp navy blue uniforms craned their necks to wave, their notebooks covered in sticker stars and hand-drawn cartoon characters. She told me that education has been compulsory for kids ages 6 to 18 for almost 20 years, and 9 out of 10 primary age kids in urban areas are enrolled in school. Even in areas where official schools have been damaged or closed, communities usually step in: a few years ago, when fighting closed three primary schools near Kirkuk, local parents turned an unused auto repair shop into a makeshift school, pooled their money to hire two local teachers, and kept kids learning for 18 months until the government reopened the original buildings. It’s not all good, though: less than 60% of secondary-age girls in rural areas stay in school, and many families still pull daughters out to work or marry early. Poverty keeps an estimated 800,000 kids out of school entirely, per UN data.
The second most common question I get is: What do kids actually learn in school? A parent at my school asked me last year if all kids learn is religion, which made me laugh, because the curriculum is pretty similar to what most kids learn around the world. All students take math, science, Arabic language, social studies, and English starting in 3rd grade. Islam is a required course for Muslim students, but Christian students can opt out entirely. The biggest problem Noor tells me about is that the curriculum changes every time the national government changes, so teachers are always scrambling to adapt. New textbooks are printed slowly and distributed unevenly, so it’s not unusual for a 10th grade history class to use books that are 10 years out of date, with wrong facts about recent events. Most families that can afford it pay for after-school tutoring, especially for English and the final exams that determine if you get into college.
Third, how do parents handle safety? That’s the question that hits closest for most parents anywhere. Lina, a mom of two elementary kids in Erbil, told me last year she kept her kids home for 12 days straight when there was a wave of rocket attacks near their neighborhood. But most days, the safety worries are just ordinary worries with an extra layer. She walks her 10-year-old daughter to the school gate every morning and waits for her there every afternoon, same as I do for my own 9-year-old. She told me, “I worry she’ll get hit by a car crossing the street, same as you. I just also worry about a siren. It’s just another thing to put on the list.” Every school has bomb shelter signs posted in the hallways, and kids do regular drills the way we do fire drills here.
That’s where the practical piece comes in for teachers and parents who have Iraqi kids joining their classrooms, something I learned the hard way two years ago. I had a new 5th grade student, a boy from Baghdad, on his first month at our school. We had our monthly fire drill, and the siren blared, and he just froze at his desk, wouldn’t move. I thought he was being defiant, until I remembered what Lina had told me about sirens meaning danger. I knelt down next to his desk, kept my voice quiet, and said, “This is just a practice. We do this every month to make sure everyone is safe. Nothing bad is happening right now. We’re just going to walk outside slowly and come back in 10 minutes.” He relaxed right away, and later that day he told me he’d only heard sirens before when his family had to run to the shelter during bombings.
That experience taught me three small, concrete things that I tell other teachers now. First, don’t assume an Iraqi student has had interrupted or poor quality schooling. Many have had consistent education, and are often ahead in math and science compared to their same-age peers here. Second, always explain what drills are for when they start at your school. Don’t just assume they know a loud siren is just a practice. Third, don’t push them to share stories of war or trauma right away. Let them bring it up on their own time; most just want to be treated like a regular kid first.
I sent all of this to the 16-year-old from Basra last week, and a few days later she sent back a photo. It’s her leaning against the concrete gate of her school, holding a stack of exam review books, grinning, with a gnarled pomegranate tree growing next to the gate. I taped it to the side of my grading bin next to my desk. There’s no single answer to what school is like in Iraq, just like there’s no single answer to what school is like anywhere. There are good days, bad days, kids who can’t go and kids who count down the minutes to summer break, teachers who show up even when they don’t get paid on time, parents who worry just like parents everywhere. Some questions don’t need neat, wrapped up answers. Just being willing to ask is the first step.
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