Iraqi Kurdistan features children on textbook covers
Shafaq News– Erbil
The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Education decided to place images of two children who gained prominence during recent protests on the covers of Kurdish-language textbooks for the upcoming school year, while the Teachers Syndicate has urged the ministry to extend the initiative to include a Grade 12 textbook.
In a post on Thursday, Education Minister Alan Hama Saeed Saleh said the ministry approved using the images on books to be printed for the next academic year, describing the children as symbols of “a high level of patriotism and love of Kurdistan.”
According to the minister, an image of a child with special needs from Erbil will appear on the cover of the sixth-grade Kurdish-language textbook, while an image of a two-year-and-three-month-old child from Al-Sulaymaniyah will be used on the first-grade Kurdish-language textbook.
“This article has a deep meaning about national education generation after generation.”
The Teachers Syndicate in the Kurdistan Region called on the minister to adopt a similar step for Grade 12 textbooks next year.
Protests have swept cities across the Kurdistan Region in recent weeks, with demonstrators rallying in support of Kurds in Syria following clashes between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian government that triggered widespread displacement. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said more than 170,000 people have been displaced across northern and northeastern Syria —including Hasakah, Aleppo, and Raqqa provinces— since early January.
