Sectarianism and levies.. The suffering of Yemenis from the Houthi destruction of education
English - Saturday 15 July 2023 الساعة 05:35 pm
Sana'a, NewsYemen, exclusive:
The Houthi militia - the Iranian arm in Yemen - has finished filling the minds of thousands of children in the governorates under its control with its extremist sectarian ideas in the largest operation to booby-trap the minds of young people - through summer camps - for which the group mobilized enormous capabilities and spent millions of riyals on it.
With the start of the new school year, the militia took another step in the context of destroying education, as it imposed what it calls a "cultural supervisor" in each of the schools in the areas under its control, in charge of monitoring cultural performance, school radio, and the extent of each school's commitment to what is called (faith identity). In other words, the extent to which schools are committed to promoting group ideology and brainwashing students.
In this regard, Mr. Ahmed Al-Riyashi, an educational employee, told "NewsYemen" that "Al-Houthi does not care about the state of the entire educational process, because education poses a threat to his survival, and exposes the falsity of his path and its adherents, and what he is trying to mobilize people's minds with."
He added, "Today, parents are suffering from great troubles in obtaining a school at a reasonable price in order to enroll their children in it. Private schools are subject to extortion, in addition to the group's dependents becoming owners of most private schools, and thus the Houthi group deals with education on the basis of an investment that the majority cannot access." In light of the neglect of public schools and the deprivation of teachers of their most basic rights, which is the salary, the Ministry of Education in Sana'a even prints textbooks for private schools and refuses to provide government schools with the books they need.
Al-Riyashi indicated that the group has been seeking, since its coup, to insult the teacher and education, and has ordered its preachers to attack teachers and curricula from the pulpits of mosques and in its media, claiming that the curriculum and the official educational process represent a Wahhabi line and an ISIS ideology, and this is all in order to proceed with its plan to destroy the educational process. And educational because the community thrives in the shadow of ignorance only.
For his part, Helmy Mashhour - a government employee - and a father of four children, says that the school where my children study in contacted us that we have to register quickly during this week, because the ministry has set July 22 as the beginning of the school year, but as soon as I went to school, we found an increase in fees by 20% from Last year, he added: "We do not know whether the Houthi authority understands that it does not pay us salaries, and does not give us anything, and does Al-Mashat, his government, Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi and his group know that they (hidden the people's skin, starved them and looted them), so how do they agree to what people's private schools do, and what The reason behind the government's lack of interest and devoting all its efforts to the educational process is for public schools to regain their role and for people to be spared from extortion from private schools."
Mashhour points out that what the ministry announced about setting tuition fees in private schools is nothing but ink on paper, and that each school has a price from its head, and it became mandatory for parents to pay 70% of the total fees in the first term, and when people talk to school principals about pricing Ministry, school owners respond with one word (secret record in the ministry).
Professor Fatima Al-Yousifi, a registration specialist in one of the private schools, answered briefly, saying: “The Ministry has determined its share of the fees for each student, and what it announces is to sow dust in the eyes only, and no one who informs the competent authorities in the Ministry will find any response. In the open, the Ministry imposed its right on every student and on Every school, and unfortunately schools take all their loss from students).
At the beginning of each academic year, parents complain about the increases in their children’s tuition fees and the neglect of government schools by the coup authorities, forcing people to go either to educate their children in expensive private schools, or to take them out of schools so that the group will seize them in its sectarian courses and recruit them as fuel for its criminal war against Yemen and the Yemenis. At the same time, the owners of private schools complain of extortion and the amounts imposed on them by the Houthis and the royalties of various names, which burdened the private schools and forced them to raise fees.
