Studying in the summer... Tampering with education deepens the tragedy of students in Iran's arm regions
English - Saturday 22 July 2023 الساعة 09:17 am
Sana'a, NewsYemen, exclusive:
For the second year in a row, the Houthi group, the Iranian arm in Yemen, continues to impose the Hijri calendar to start the school year in its areas of control, despite the objections and criticisms of parents and students.
The group imposed the adoption of the Hijri calendar to determine the beginning and end of the academic year, unlike the system previously adopted in Yemen and in most countries of the world, especially those with hot climates, by relying on the Gregorian calendar to take into account the climate conditions in the four seasons of the year.
According to this system, the school year starts from late August to early September, that is, with the end of the summer season, and ends with its approach, taking into account the difficulty of studying in this season due to the heat, so that the summer season becomes a school vacation, to be called the “summer vacation.”
In contrast, last year the group approved the start of the academic year according to the beginning of the Hijri calendar, whose timing changes with the Gregorian calendar every year due to the difference in the number of days in each calendar, as it currently coincides with the beginning of the Hijri year with the hot summer.
According to the announcement of the group's Ministry of Education, students in the areas under its control must go to their schools next Saturday, July 22, to launch the new academic year, while the Ministry of Education of the legitimate government announced the start of the academic year in the liberated areas on August 27.
Many parents and activists on social media expressed their objection to the Houthi authorities' insistence on imposing their decision on the beginning of the school year, despite the noticeable rise in temperatures for this year within the global warming phenomenon that the world has witnessed in recent years.
The noticeable rise in temperatures was not spared by the regions known in northern Yemen for their moderate climate in summer, such as Sana'a, Dhamar and Amran, whose residents confirmed that this summer's heat is unprecedented, which multiplies the anger towards the Houthi group's insistence on imposing its decision about the start of the school year.
The group, in an attempt to mitigate this anger, issued through the Ministry of Education in Sana'a a circular with a slight adjustment in school hours, in schools in the coastal and desert regions, in the governorates of: "Al-Hodeidah, Hajjah, Al-Jawf, and Marib due to the high temperature.
A step that was met with ridicule by the Yemenis in the areas controlled by the Houthi group, who considered it a new tampering exercised by the group with the right to education, after it tampered in recent years with the educational process, starting with cutting teachers' salaries and ending with tampering with the school curricula to plant its sectarian ideas.
