Teachers in the Kurdish-held part of eastern Deir Ezzor province have refused to replace the UNICEF curricula with a Kurdish educational program in the elementary schools, activists said Sunday.
The curriculum is promoting the Kurdish militant movement and personalities in a region that historically known as the land of Arab tribes.
The Council of the Self-Administration in Deir Ezzor announced that the results were negative after the meetings with the teachers and families regarding the curricula of the first cycle from the first to the fourth grades in the “Jazrat, Al Kasrah, and al-Husain” areas due to the teachers ’refusal to accept the alternative curriculum instead of the UNICEF curriculum that was used previously.
The Chairman of the Deir Ezzor Civil Council, Leila al-Hassan, said during a meeting that the curriculum is under discussion and it can be modified according to the region.
The rejection was also unanimous during a vote at a meeting held at the Abu Hamam Education Complex, as well as in al-Shahail, Sha’fah and Hajin, east of Deir Ezzor to discuss objections to the "self-administration" curriculum due to its scientific weakness and its contradiction to religion, customs and traditions of the local community.
For his part, a school principal in Al-Bahra said that they rejected the curriculum of self-management because of changing the subject of Islamic education with the “Beliefs of Nations”, which could be understood as fighting the Islamic religion and marginalizing it, in addition to adding the “Women’s Science” book for the preparatory grade and this book is contrary to Islamic customs and law and calls for the liberation of women as in the Western way.
He added that the nationalism subject, which glorifies the Ba'ath Party and its men (symbols of the Assad regime), was replaced by "the Democratic Nation" book that glorifies Kurdish figures and the Kurdish struggle (the Democratic Union etc..) as well as introducing the book on the history of Kurdistan and Kurdish folklore while absent what happened in Deir Ezzor during the revolution and before it, and thus changed the important role of the region.
The source pointed out that they demanded to put the Holy Koran and Islamic education as main subjects.
Likewise, a group of teachers spoke during the meetings that “the emergency curriculum provided by UNICEF is really better than the curriculum for self-administration, and it is characterized by the existence of scientific subjects and interdependence in terms of the form of the book and its content, while the books of the new curriculum do not even contain introductions to present the authors of these books.”
On Friday, the Education Authority in Self-Administration held several meetings with the families of students in "Al Tabqah" west of Raqqa, after objections to altering the curriculum adopted by "UNICEF", on the pretext of delay in obtaining the textbook and the low level of these curricula, which are not commensurate with the age levels and mental capabilities of students , Which teachers refute is excellent and its authors are well-known names, but the administration has refused to reproduce books to enforce their curricula.
The most important objections of the specialized teachers to the new curriculum can be summarized as follows:
The "genealogy" (women’s science) subject, which is considered a sexual content that is not suitable for the local community and cannot be allocated to children in pre-university education, so it should be canceled.
The Culture and Ethics, or Beliefs of Nations, an alternative to Islamic education that discusses the Zoroastrian and Yezidi religions and religions sanctifying nature (the sun), and requested that they be abolished because people under SDF control areas in Deir eZ-zor are Muslims and there are no Zoroastrians, Yazidis and others.
History subject: Paragraphs talking about important historical stages were canceled especially when talking about Umayyads, Abbasids and others. Also, highlighting recent events and considering that the events of Qamishli in 2004 are the beginning of the Syrian revolution, and mistakes and faults must be corrected and historical paragraphs that talk about the role of Arabs in historical events must be mentioned.
In geography, maps were manipulated and maps of northern Syria were introduced under the name "Rojava" and others and must be corrected.
Zaman Al Wasl
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