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The newly constructed Kovak Primary School sits on a prominent hillside overlooking the entry gate to the city of Dohuk, Iraq. Photo by Derek Walker, Gulf Region North, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Primary School Will Help Mold Iraq's Future School is now complete and ready to house 36 teachers and about 825 students. By Claude D. McKinney Gulf Region North, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers DAHUK, Iraq, Jan. 11, 2006 — Within a community, the activities occurring in two specialized types of buildings hold great sway and influence for the residents of the community – they are...

"In a small dusty classroom, dirty with mold but brightened by a red plastic flower in a vase, English teacher Azhar Hashim tells a student practicing the words "I'm from Iraq," to raise his voice when he says that. "We all have to be proud of our country," she says, her black dress stained white with chalk. In the next room, Thanaa Mohamed asks her students to describe the rights of Iraqi citizens. "Equality and freedom," answers 12-year-old Jiwan Arasin. "Who can define equality?" Mohamed asks. "All people were born free," answers Esraa Jabbar. And freedom? "To express your opinion...

The London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has published a report by Huda Jasim on changes made to Iraqi schoolbooks following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. The new schoolbooks will be introduced with the start of the 2005/6 school year in September. According to the report, the Iraqi education minister formed a committee of senior educators and specialists to reexamine the country's school curricula for the new Iraq. The committee proposed substantial changes to be made to the school textbooks, with the aim of completely eradicating the Saddam personality cult and placing considerably less emphasis on the Ba'th Party than...

BAGHDAD -- Rebuilding the Iraqi higher education system will have to be done by degrees because while funds are available and progress has been made, goodwill and hard work must battle insurgent assassins and years of decline. "I fear for my life as a professor," said Salwa Al Awadi, who teaches genetic engineering at the University of Baghdad. "When I walk in the street I am a target." At least 49 academics have been murdered since the fall of former leader Saddam Hussein in April 2003, according to UN figures, while political scientist Whamid Nadhmi puts the figure around 80....

BAGHDAD -- Kassim used to teach geography in the morning and spend afternoons repairing shoes in the streets of the central Iraqi town of Azizyah. Those days are over. Iraq's 300,000 teachers have seen vast changes since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell in April 2003 and Kassim can now feed his four children without having to cobble a living together. From an average monthly salary of 10,000 Iraqi dinars (around $2 to $3 at the time) plus food subsidies, they can now earn from 300,000 to 400,000 Iraqi dinars ($200 to $270). The result, says 40-year-old English teacher Jawad...

Gertrude Bell, the renowned Arabist and principal creator of today's Iraq, is making a comeback. Almost half a century after she disappeared from Iraq's classrooms, Britain's most famous female colonial officer is returning to the history syllabus.The intrepid adventuress, archaeologist and unofficial first lady of Iraq is to be rehabilitated under a new education plan for the country's schoolchildren, which a curriculum commission meets next month to formalise. A post-Saddam Hussein group of educationalists wants history lessons to offer children a more balanced view of the past, in marked contrast to the priorities of Iraq's Ba'athist regime. "Our job is...

German Education Minister Edelgard Buhlmahn has said that Germany will support Iraq in rebuilding its universities. Speaking after talks with the visiting Iraqi minister for higher education, Ziad Abdul Razzak Aswad, in Berlin on Monday, Buhlmahn said the German government was interested in a politically stable, economically strong and an internationally connected Iraq and added that a good education system was indispensable to that end. "We would also like to see more students and scientists from Iraq coming for a stay in Germany," Buhlmahn added. Around 400 Iraqis are currently studying in Germany, according to Buhlmahn.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 29, 2004 — As on any day in Baghdad, the sun rose on the students of the Al-Jasmine primary school located in the neighborhood of Mustansyria. But on this bright day, the students were in for a big surprise. It was 10:30 in the morning Jan. 26 and as the children were standing quietly in the back yard of the school preparing for the last day of examinations, U.S. Army appeared. About a dozen soldiers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team including some from 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, arrived with loads of school supplies for the...

NEWS RELEASEHEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND7115 South Boundary BoulevardMacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894 January 26, 2004Release Number: 04-01-64 101ST REFURBISHES TEACHING FACILITY MOSUL, Iraq - The leaders of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Corps Support Group were among the invited guests at a ribbon cutting ceremony today in the city of Mosul for a teachers’ training facility that they helped refurbish. The teachers’ training facility is a place where teachers will be trained in their respective fields and taught the most up-to-date techniques in teaching children. “Training sessions will not be American...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — When Aisha Emad left a computer science seminar taught by a U.S. military officer last week at Baghdad University, she avoided fellow students. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., sent eight professors to the Iraqi capital over the past two weeks, hoping to open young minds to America’s military education system. While Emad said she enjoyed hearing Army Maj. Edward Mattison discuss how his cadets apply algorithms to Java script, she rushed past armed soldiers as she left class. “People say I’m collaborating with the invaders,” said the 22-year-old sophomore, who spent four years of...

<p>WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Hamas and Hezbollah are operating openly in southern Iraq, an Iraqi-American recently returned from the country said Thursday.</p> <p>"I was surprised to see an office for Hamas in Nasariah, and also a Hezbollah office in Basra and Safwan," said Zainab Al-Suwaij, a Shiite Muslim native of Basra. "I was shocked to see their flag and their sign there. ... Do we ... who are emerging from the terror of Saddam after 35 years, need this in our country?"</p>

<p>You come in-country on a military cargo plane, traveling from a military airfield in Kuwait. Your plane comes down steeply from the sky (to avoid Saddamist rocketeers) to the military side of the international airport in Baghdad. You're a senior adviser on education for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), recruited by the White House and the office of the secretary of defense and approved by Ambassador Paul Bremer. Your five-month mission is to help revive teaching and learning in a country on the mend from a fascist despotism. What's it like?</p>

GRADUATION DAY: Despite the US invasion of Iraq and the delay of the school year, these Baghdad University graduates are trying to move forward with their lives. SCOTT PETERSON/GETTY IMAGES from the December 09, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1209/p01s03-legn.html Iraq's students say, 'Welcome back, professor' By Christina Asquith | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD - After a decade of sanctions had left his physics lab a crumbling shell, Raad Mohammed decided it was time to go. In 1999, following a route trodden by thousands of the best and brightest of Iraq's academics, Dr. Mohammed escaped to Jordan without a...

In Iraq, school administrators are struggling to keep their classroom doors open and their students educated, in the face of many obstacles unleashed by the occupation of the country. Looting has become commonplace, while lack of supplies and the decay of basic infrastructure make teaching a challenge. Into this situation steps Bechtel Corporation, the San Francisco-based engineering and construction giant. In April Bechtel was awarded a contract by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for the reconstruction of Iraq's primary and secondary schools, as part of a deal worth up to $1.03 billion to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. But the...

Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 6:40:58 PM EST By RICHARD SALE, UPI Intelligence Correspondent American's top man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, last week fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers as political punishment for their former membership in the Saddam Hussein-dominated Baath Party, fueling anti-U.S. resistance on the ground, administration officials have told United Press International. A Central Command spokesman, speaking to UPI from Baghdad, acknowledged that the firings had taken place but said the figure of 28,000 "is too high." He was unable, however, after two days, to supply UPI with a lower, revised total. The Central Command spokesman attributed the...

NAJAF, Iraq, Nov 18 (AFP) - The local representative of the Iraqi education ministry in the southern Iraqi province of Diwaniyah was shot dead by gunmen, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. The man was named as Hamud Kazem al-Muhmadawi, in his late 50s. "He was hit by three bullets in front of his house Monday night," said Ziad al-Khalidi, a local tribal chief. He said al-Muhmadawi was buried Tuesday in Diwaniyah. str-sc/sjw Iraq-unrest-Shiite

Back in school, Iraqis have a lot of unlearning to do By Cesar G. Soriano, USA TODAY BAGHDAD — Iraqi children began their school year Wednesday with new clothes, new book bags and a new curriculum that has been purged of former leader Saddam Hussein's political ideology. Pupils were indoctrinated with military education, preparing them for a life of violence. It was humiliating to the educational process," said Abdul-Zahra Abbas, acting director of the Ministry of Education's curriculum department. Abbas and his staff are working on a new national education program. (Audio: New year, new curriculum for Iraqi students) The...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 30 — When Iraqi children return to school this Saturday, they will no longer see Saddam Hussein's portrait in the classroom or start the day chanting of his heroic struggle against the snakehead of the devil that is America. But Mr. Hussein has still not quite been expelled. New Saddam-free textbooks are being printed, but they are not expected to be available until November. So students will open their books and face a variation of that old test question: identify the object that does not belong with the rest. The correct answers will require tearing out full-page...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 30 — When Iraqi children return to school this Saturday, they will no longer see Saddam Hussein's portrait in the classroom or start the day chanting of his heroic struggle against the snakehead of the devil that is America. But Mr. Hussein has still not quite been expelled. New Saddam-free textbooks are being printed, but they are not expected to be available until November. So students will open their books and face a variation of that old test question: identify the object that does not belong with the rest. The correct answers will require tearing out full-page...

<p>Baghdad -- With Saddam Hussein gone and Iraq's economy in shambles, few changes since the war's end are likely to be as startling as those awaiting the nation's students when they return to class Wednesday to begin their first academic year without the dictator.</p>