Un Con Troll Able
07-03-2007, 06:55 AM
By Sam Dagher, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Tue Jul 3, 4:00 AM ET
Baghdad - Ihab Thaer couldn't afford the bribes some of his friends at his central Baghdad high school paid for a preview of final exam questions. He wishes instead that he could have benefited from a different tip to the scale: a visit by militias to force proctors to let him cheat.
Over the past two weeks, Iraq has seen an unprecedented level of interference by militias and insurgents as students have taken national exams for middle and high school diplomas. Cheating and bribing have also marred the process – as have threats by parents to uncooperative teachers.
Iraq's schools and universities were once the pride of the Arab world. But one expert says that what has happened inside exam halls, along with the plummeting standards of the education system, are further symptoms of the systematic unraveling of Iraqi society and its institutions.
"There is real terror going on at some of these exams," says Asma Jamil, a sociologist at Baghdad University, adding that students feel that Iraq's instability gives them the right to cheat, while armed groups want to win the sympathy of the public.
"It's a result of greater social decay," she says, "and it feeds it by graduating a generation of aggressive, sometimes extremist, students who have very little capability for critical thinking."
The Ministry of Education recently solicited solutions to the problem from her and other experts, she says, but that there has been little follow-up. "We are witnessing," she says, "the complete collapse of the education system."
Destined to be a country of village idiots...
Not that Muslims have ever been known as Einsteins.
The rest:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070703/ts_csm/oexams;_ylt=Ao2vSzyguM3ZSs9Pzhp5jv3MWM0F
Baghdad - Ihab Thaer couldn't afford the bribes some of his friends at his central Baghdad high school paid for a preview of final exam questions. He wishes instead that he could have benefited from a different tip to the scale: a visit by militias to force proctors to let him cheat.
Over the past two weeks, Iraq has seen an unprecedented level of interference by militias and insurgents as students have taken national exams for middle and high school diplomas. Cheating and bribing have also marred the process – as have threats by parents to uncooperative teachers.
Iraq's schools and universities were once the pride of the Arab world. But one expert says that what has happened inside exam halls, along with the plummeting standards of the education system, are further symptoms of the systematic unraveling of Iraqi society and its institutions.
"There is real terror going on at some of these exams," says Asma Jamil, a sociologist at Baghdad University, adding that students feel that Iraq's instability gives them the right to cheat, while armed groups want to win the sympathy of the public.
"It's a result of greater social decay," she says, "and it feeds it by graduating a generation of aggressive, sometimes extremist, students who have very little capability for critical thinking."
The Ministry of Education recently solicited solutions to the problem from her and other experts, she says, but that there has been little follow-up. "We are witnessing," she says, "the complete collapse of the education system."
Destined to be a country of village idiots...
Not that Muslims have ever been known as Einsteins.
The rest:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070703/ts_csm/oexams;_ylt=Ao2vSzyguM3ZSs9Pzhp5jv3MWM0F