Teachers Will Be Tested When Schools Reopen

BAGHDAD —  The school day at Arab Unity Elementary School used to begin with all 600 pupils gathering on the playground to sing a song praising Saddam Hussein. Then, at the start of every class, teachers would write one of his “100 Wise Sayings” on the blackboard for the children to memorize. Lessons in subjects from math to Arabic grammar included teachings of his greatness.

That’s all over now. But no one knows yet what the new lesson plan will be.

On Saturday, in battered teachers’ lounges and half-wrecked classrooms across the capital, schoolteachers -- summoned by calls broadcast on Baghdad’s sole operating radio frequency -- gathered to talk about what will happen when children return to the classroom, probably in mid-May. Most schools closed about a month ago, as the war with the United States was about to begin.

At Arab Unity Elementary -- rundown, dusty and in a state of disarray, but left largely untouched by looters -- the teachers’ conference was a study in hope and regret, in high anxiety and stirrings of excitement. All 10 of the teachers who made their way to the school in central Baghdad said they were eager to return to work but that they had no idea what kind of curriculum would replace the nonstop homage to Hussein.

“What will we use for textbooks? They’re all about Saddam,” said assistant principal Bashima Hashim, who also teaches second grade, fingering one of the flimsy cardboard-bound booklets that third-graders used. There were cartoon figures of the Iraqi leader on almost every page.

“And who’s going to pay our salaries?” she asked. “We made so little before -- how long can we go with nothing?” The others, all women, most of them middle-aged, nodded their heads in agreement. All said they had earned the equivalent of about $10 a month.

For determinedly education-minded Iraqi parents, few tasks amid the vast array of urgent reconstruction and rehabilitation projects are more pressing than getting school started again.

The school year ends in June, and parents want their children to be able to make up lost lessons before then. The blistering summertime heat will make it impossible to extend classes for more than a week or two, long beyond the usual letting-out date, school administrators said.

“Every day, I have parents who catch sight of me on the street and come up to me to beg, ‘Please, please, you must start school again soon,’ ” said Nawal Khalil, who teaches math and science.

Iraqis of all ages and walks of life were subjected to a constant barrage of Hussein propaganda. Adults ignored much of it, but schoolchildren soaked it up like sponges, the teachers said.

“I hate myself for the things I taught them,” said Thuria Jaber, who teaches history, geography and national studies. “With the subjects I teach, I had to tell so many lies. Even just before the war, I would talk all the time about how great Saddam was, and how he would vanquish his enemies.”

Whatever remorse they have now, none of the teachers dared at the time to deviate from state-sanctioned lesson plans. Government supervisors would sit in on classes every few weeks, and teachers were nervously aware that many of the children had parents who were members of Hussein’s Republican Guard or were top officials in the ruling Baath Party.

“We were frightened all the time,” said Kitam Naama, a first-grade teacher.

“Even when I was teaching the littlest ones to write their first words, I had to show them to write his name. And we had to teach them to call him ‘Baba Saddam’ ” -- an endearment approximating “Papa.”

As children learned to count, the teachers said, any number associated somehow with Hussein, or the Baath Party, or the military establishment would be noted -- 28, for his birthday on April 28, or six, for Jan. 6, the anniversary of the army’s establishment.

The teachers’ talk turned to new subjects they might try, tentatively, to teach.

“We can tell them about life in other countries,” said one. “The Internet!” said another. But all said they would wait for instructions about what the new curriculum should be.

“And who is going to tell us that?” Naama asked. No one answered.

Arab Unity Elementary faces other, just as vexing problems.

Teachers say students often disappear from class and that they learn later the children have gone to work to try to earn money to help their destitute families. There’s no janitor; teachers do the cleaning themselves. They sighed as they looked at the thick layers of gritty dust covering broken desks and cracked floors, the product of a series of sandstorms over the last month.

The gathering was a reminder of the anxieties many in this sprawling capital had suffered over the safety of friends and colleagues.

There is no telephone service yet, and most of the teachers were seeing each other for the first time since the early days of the war.

They showered one another with kisses, giggled giddily together. “Thank God you are all right,” they would say. “And you and yours, thank God,” would come the reply.

Teacher Bashima Hashim toured her old classroom. Desks were piled in a jumble; she had heard that the neighborhood branch of the Baath Party had used the school to store supplies during the U.S. bombardment. Windows were broken.

There was still one small poster on the wall, a drawing of Hussein surrounded by adoring children. “The children of Iraq say, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ to Saddam,” it was captioned.

But a large portrait at the front of the classroom was missing. Hashim gazed at the pale spot on the wall where the picture had been.

“I want never to see it here again,” she murmured. “Finally, we have some hope.”