IRAQ: Students Fail, Like So Much Else

[marmar]

IPS, via MichaelMoore.com:



August 14th, 2008 6:28 pm
IRAQ: Students Fail, Like So Much Else


By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail* / IPS

BAGHDAD - Living from one crisis to another, without electricity or freedom to move under a collapse of security, massive numbers of Iraqi students are failing their exams.

"It is a natural result of what is going on in Iraq under this U.S. occupation that so many Iraqi students failed the high school exams," Mahmood Jassim, a teacher in Baghdad told IPS.

"How can a student pass such difficult exams feeling terrified, exhausted in the heat, in darkness without electricity, having to work in the absence of a dead or detained father, and all the problems of the world over his head."

Jassim says about 75 percent of his students are failing their exams.

"I am ashamed of the results my school achieved this year," a school headmaster in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "I cannot tell you what percentage we achieved because that will reveal me and my school. You do not really believe we are living in a democratic country, do you?" ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=12081