Mizgin Tabu/JINHA

AMED – Of the 360 schools in Kobanê canton, just 50 are usable, says Perwin Hemo, of the canton’s language institution. Despite this, teachers are working to clean the munitions from schools and bring their environmentalist, woman-centered curriculum to more schools across the canton.

The destruction of schools was most severe in the city center, where teachers have been able to bring just three schools in the city online. In the city center, 4,000 students are engaged in an education on democratic and environmentalist principles among the broken glass and non-working toilets. Perwin and her team have so far removed mines, bombs, bullets and other munitions from 50 schools in the canton, including the villages.

“Where we are is not important,” Perwin said. “What’s important is how, why, and what we want to learn.” Currently, students are still working from Arabic textbooks due to the lack of Kurdish books, but the canton is working on gathering enough books in Kurdish to increase native-language education for Kurdish students. They face the difficulty of having only 200 Kurdish-language titles to work with due to the historical marginalization of the Kurdish language.

“When we look at Kurdish history, it’s painful. 800 books are written in a year in France,” Perwin remarked.

Teachers say they hope that the curriculum they are developing will be an example for all parts of Kurdistan. The curriculum includes sections on equality, environmental living, the search for rights, and democratic society. They are also working on an infrastructure to promote projects by Arab, Armenian and Assyrian Rojava residents to develop their own curricula. Each canton and group will develop a curriculum according to its own needs.

The majority of the canton’s teachers were forced to migrate or died in the Daesh attacks. Teachers are working on training a new cadre of teachers to serve the returning canton residents.

“For me, to continue education even in the ruins is a source of pride,” said Almaz Eli, who teaches in the city.

(zd/cm)