School, Can You Make It There? HW: 33

Alive in Baghdad is a video website devoted to exposing the hardships in Bagdad through updated podcast. The video I just watched was Challenges at a Girls School in Baghdad - 05.21.2007, a short series of interviews with teachers and student at an all girls school in Baghdad. The students and teachers both agreed that the conditions are tough and the showing of girls dwindles each day because of wide spread violence. One student explains how her parents want her to drop out of school because the danger of traveling to school each day over powers the benefit of attending. The school its self is comparable to the old mills that I grew up next to that had broken windows and cracked foundations. The interior of the classroom was bland with not much on the walls except for dirt stains and broken concrete. The teachers insist on keeping the school in session despite the regular raids and occasional blasts nearby. What stuck me the most about the vide was the fact that they can find teachers willing to show up everyday never knowing if they will be shot at or bombed, and for what. So that they can teach the 10 students or so that could make to class today but might not be there for the next week because there family is arrested and she is abandon. I have only seen war footage of Iraq but I can imagine that the rest of the town where the school is located is badly beaten. This video can teach us that we should be ecstatic to use 2005 software for our computers because the schools in Iraq have chalk for recent technology.

Link: http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/05/21/challenges-at-a-girls-school-in-baghdad/