Saddam erased from Iraqi school syllabus

Pages ripped out, covers defaced, paragraphs blacked out all to erase one of the most influential men of the decade. Is this the right step to educate Iraqi children about history to...erase it?

One of the most efficient ways of thought control is to teach a person something never happened. I remember reading a few reports that some German schools decades ago (and maybe to this day) shy away from teaching that Hitler was a dictator. But damnit we're talking about Iraqi right now, why did I even mention Germany? That's like talking about Peanut Butter and then associating it with margarine.

Iraq's children returned to school yesterday for the start of a fresh academic year with a new syllabus that has all but erased Saddam Hussein from its history.

After two years of debate, the education department has completed textbooks to replace those that portrayed the past purely from a Ba'athist view.



However, in a tribute to the sensitivities of post-Sadam Iraq, the revised version of history is, on some subjects, as partial and shot through with gaps as the old.

Baghdad now no longer wins the Iran-Iraq war nor confronts the evil of Zionism alone. Primary schools will not have to teach reading with phrases such as "I love Saddam".
Telegraph

[edit on 9/12/2005 by Simulacra]

it sounds like a story from japan a few months back when japan were trying to re write there history books about the battles with chinain ww2.
i wonder if true will anyone be speaking out against it

[edit on 12-9-2005 by andy1033]

Originally posted by andy1033
it sounds like a story from japan a few months back when japan were trying to re write there history books about the battles with chinain ww2.
i wonder if true will anyone be speaking out against it

[edit on 12-9-2005 by andy1033]

That sounds like something China might do (or did), not sure about Japan.

This is a bad idea.

Erasing all memory and historical record of Saddam Hssein's regime will lead to ignorance of the atrocities it commited. Without knowledge of what can happen under such a system, Iraq will again be vulnerable to the establishment of a similar dictatorship.

The people do, to an extent, need to be re-educated, but as part of the proccess they have to learn why.

That's not the right way to go about things; how do they expect these kids to know where to go, if they don't know where they have been? You just can't cut out all of the things that are considered bad; that's not giving these kids knowledge. I mean, we still learn about Jim Crow laws and the KKK, and the atrocities of the Vietnam War.

All they should do is lay the facts out; and let the kids take those facts and form thier own opinions on Saddam's riegn. That is the only way that they can learn from the past; if not they will be back in the same boat, but with a different captian.

Well before you go body slamming them with American freedom of information type arguements, consider that the people have been subjugated to this person for more than 30 years ... subject to rapes, tortures, beheadings, murders, ethnic cleansings, truly horrible acts that are simply unspeakable.

Would you teach your 3rd grader all of these things?

I suspect it's a reactionary decision to finally being capable of making such a rule, without losing your life for speaking out against SH.

I read that during SH's regime, he had even changed all math textbooks in Iraqi schools to use the variable letters s and h instead of x and y ... so eliminating him from some textbooks is I think quite deserved.

I'm sure if they wanted to know the truth they can easily do some Google searching ...

Yes, what he did was horrible; and would I teach that to a third grader? No. But there would be quite the gap in the history department. I am not saying that they should continue on like they did while he was in power, but to erase him completly is just wrong. As for the math, go for it; X and Y, S and H, they are all the same thing.

No you dont teach a 3rd grader about the rape's etc..

Also you are saying that Saddam is being ripped out of the current textbooks. With that said you have to remeber in those text books he was most likely portrayed as saviour and saint. Doing that would be MUCH worse then not teaching them about him.

However not teaching them about who he was, what he did wrong, what he did right, and how they got to where they today is wrong. They need to know what can and has happened to make sure it doesnt happen again.

So while not the 3rd grader, the 9th 12th.. Yes. Most definately.

It happens ever day, every where in the the world. Ever heard of Squanto?