Certainly the basics like reading, writing and arithmetic are important, but are also subjects that have been learned by many people in many places at many different ages under a variety of difficult circumstances.
The children of Syrian refugees whose families have resettled in foreign countries are proving their resilience and ability to be quick learners by acquiring the languages of their host countries at an amazing pace.
A recent Syrian graduate of a university in Jordan finished a four year program in three years.
Inside Syria, children in regime controlled areas continue to be educated the same way they were before the revolution began — with curriculum laced with Baath Party propaganda in classrooms watched over by portraits of the current dictator.
Everything is viewed through the kaleidoscope of the importance of Assad’s role in Syria and his eternal presidency which is an extension of his father’s, and we can only presume will be carried on by his own son — unless something happens to interrupt the dictatorial inheritance.
Forty-five years of this type of educational indoctrination has succeeded in brainwashing many Syrians into believing that without an Assad in power there can be no Syria.
Regime schools have proven to be effective training centers for those who have faithfully served in Assad’s military with unquestioning loyalty.
When the training failed to produce the desired results and students challenged the legitimacy and authority of the corrupt and brutal regime, those same children were then labeled as “terrorists” and classified as fodder for bullets and bombs.
Children hold no value for Assad if they do not acknowledge and follow the party line of his eternal supremacy in Syria.
On the other hand, efforts to educate displaced Syrian children, as well as those living in the liberated areas of the country — where the majority of the schools have been deliberately destroyed by the regime — lack consistency, and institutional accountability.
The Assad regime takes every opportunity to highlight what it views as the supremacy and superiority of the educational opportunities it provides to students of families who support Assad while continually denying that it has ever targeted schools in areas of Syria not under its control.
In addition, the threat of opportunistic Islamic groups now operating inside Syria using the independently established schools as vehicles for indoctrinating children with their own ideologies — often in exchange for much needed financial support — is also real.
As Kafranbel resident and editor of Zawrak magazine for children, Mohamad al-Salloum, said in a recent interview, Syria’s children have become “war booty”, commodities who are being used by a variety of world players to further their own agendas.
In some of the countries where Syrian refugees have gone seeking safety from the violence of the regime, children have been exploited by sex traffickers and unscrupulous employers looking for cheap labor.
The desperation of refugees who have had to find ways to survive after being forced to leave their former lives — often with nothing but what they could carry — has provided their children with a different sort of education that few parents would willingly choose for their children.
But the exploitation goes even deeper than just being indoctrinated as child soldiers, sex workers and cheap labor.
Even good intentioned humanitarian organizations have used the plight of Syria’s children to solicit donations from world citizens whose hearts have been moved by their photos and stories.
Celebrities like Angelina Jolie have donated their time as goodwill ambassadors to garner support for United Nations refugee relief efforts which have been tainted by its close relationship with the Assad regime in Syria.
While Jolie visits refugee children in Lebanon and Jordan, encouraging well-meaning donors to give to refugee aid, United Nations employees living in Damascus hobnob with members of the Assad regime and arrange for millions of those donated UN dollars to be given to the charities of Assad’s wife and his family members that never reach Syria’s child refugees.
The most effective schools in refugee camps, both inside and outside of Syria, have been established by small NGOs that use money raised on a month to month basis to fund local programs.
Often the teachers are not certified, but are motivated by their love and concern for the children. Some work as volunteers and others receive small monthly salaries that are budgeted for by the sponsor organizations.
Although these types of efforts have been criticized as unorganized and lacking in accountability or standardized testing procedures, for the educational purposes of the children involved they can be highly effective.
In many areas of the world, including the United States, home schooling is an acceptable alternative to institutionalized education.
At times alternatively schooled children have proven to excel their peers in many areas since the teaching methods used are often less restrictive and flexible enough to adapt to the individual needs of the children being taught.
For instance, those adults who share their lives and circumstances with Syria’s child refugees know better than any outsider what these children have been through and how their experiences have affected them.
Learning is a life-long process and education comes in many forms. In some respects the children of Syria have been learning many lessons that cannot be taught in traditional schools.
From what we have seen of those who have been given opportunities to prove what they are capable of, Syrian children have shown that rather than being a lost generation, they are the generation of endless possibilities when released from the constraints of political and ideological indoctrination they have been subjected to in Assad’s Syria for far too long.
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