The world celebrates the World Education Day, which falls on January 24 every year, in order to recall its important role and its lofty message in educating generations. This is also an opportunity to draw attention to the suffering of the educational sector, as is the case in Yemen. Despite the current difficult circumstances facing the education sector and its male and female workers as a result of the armed conflict in Yemen and its disastrous consequences, this global occasion is an opportunity to recall the desire of Yemenis for decades to move towards and invest in education.

In order to document unique school experiences in the field of education, I wanted to highlight, in the following lines, one example of the local community’s solidarity in establishing a “school,” and the experience of the village of “Al-Ghalibia” in the isolation of the frown in Haifan District, Taiz, in establishing the village school currently known as Al Falah School, an extension of the Ahmadiyya School, which was established in the fifties of the last century, and which was among the oldest schools in North Yemen at the time.

What prompted me most to write this article was to invest my regular visits to my father, educational professor Ismail Muhammad Ghaleb al-Faqih, in documenting a small amount of the vast quantity of information and details in his memory and publishing some of what he collected years ago. The father spent 37 years in the field of education, his beginning as a teacher at the “Al Falah” school between the academic years 1974 and 1975.

Ahmed Muhammad Al-Harbi points out in his book “The Cooperative Bodies: The General Union of Civil Cooperation and Development Organizations” that the Ghalabi charitable project - “Aboose” had established in the early fifties a school in the village of Ghaliba, and the school was run by a civil committee. But in fact, between about 1948 and 1951, Hammoud Abd al-Rab, who was an expatriate and married to a British woman, sent a letter to Imam Ahmad Hamid al-Din requesting the construction of a school in the village. Imam Ahmad ordered his delegate in Al-Mavalis (before he moved to Haifan) to explore the area and build the school in the right place.

Construction costs were delivered in installments by Sheikh Thabet Hamid. The last installment that Muhammad Ali Ismail received from a Haifan ruler was an amount of 25 French riyals (or “French” as it is said in the dialect or Maria Theresa), in exchange for the value of 50 planks (furnishes) for the roof of the school. As for the windows and the door, it was completed by Taher Ismail Said, for 17 French riyals. The school was a large and rectangular room with a sidewalk along the walls on which students could sit, and at the end of it there was a “bench” for the teacher.

The school was called the Ahmadiyya School, and the Ministry of Education approved the jurist Abdullah Ahmad Ghaleb as a teacher at the school in 1951. He was the first educational government employee from the village of Ghaliba, and he received a monthly salary of 8 French riyals and a mug of (Western) love – sorghum

The teacher was writing examples of letters on the board containing the conditions of the village and what the family needs, and the students would write down the text of the letter literally, and write it daily so that they could write it by heart and write similar letters to their parents in Aden.

In an unpublished topic about the school and its teachers, my father, Mr. Ismail, gave a brief about the jurist Abdullah Ahmed Ghaleb. It came in the context of his topic that the jurist Abdullah was born around 1915, in the village of Ghaliba Obos, where he grew up, and taught in the village by Ghaleb al-Faqih for a short time. Then he moved to the city of Aden where he devoted himself to studying in the "Aban" mosque with the imam of the mosque, where he learnt for two years until he completed his studies, and there he also studied first aid, injections and vaccination. After completing his studies, he was appointed imam, teacher and curator of the "Saharij" mosque, and worked there for six months, then moved to the "Al-Taweelah" mosque, where he worked as an imam, teacher and curator for three years, then returned to the village.

He mentioned that the Ahmadiyya school was mixed (boys and girls), and there were no classrooms, as is customary nowadays. The education system was not different from what was known at the time as “Katatib and Mualmat.” The jurist used to divide male and female students into seminars according to level (beginner - intermediate - advanced), and they could be divided into more than three levels, and more than one circle per level.

The most important subjects taught at that time included the spelling "Al-Qaeda Al-Baghdadia", the Qur'an and Tajweed, the Zubd book in Shafi'i jurisprudence for the higher levels, and arithmetic in simple ways. As for the Arabic language lessons, they were limited to calligraphy, spelling and writing letters. The text of a letter from the village to the city was permanently written on the board, and texts included; salutations and greetings, a request for the monthly expenses or confirmation of receipt, as well as details of the workers' expenses (in the case of harvesting or planting). The text of the message may refer to clothes if the occasion is an Eid, and to explain the conditions of agriculture and livestock, and the message concludes with a prayer for the head of the family for a long life. The students would translate the text of the letter literally, and they would write it daily so that they could write it by heart and they could write similar letters to their parents in Aden.

After the revolution of September 26 in 1962, the villagers built the "Al-Falah" school, which was opened in 1967, to teach up to the fourth grade of primary school. The Office of Education in the Taiz district delegated Mr. Mohammad Mohammad al-Ghafari and Mr. Abdul-Daem al-Sada to inaugurate the school alongside al-Faqih Abdullah. It is worth mentioning that the new school (Al-Falah) was built on the ruins of (Al-Ahmadiya). Once opened, Al-Faqih Abdullah joined the teaching staff of the new school as a teacher of the Holy Qur’an and Islamic education.

Many boys and girls were taught by the Faqih Abdullah, including the founders of the wheel of development in Yemen, and key personalities who contributed in various political, military, economic, cultural and social fields in Yemen.

School Management

A number of distinguished parents took over the management of the school at that stage, including, for example, Mr. Abdul-Baqi Abdullah Al-Murshidi (the village judge) until 1972. In the same year, Mr. Abdul-Baqi Muhammad Ahmad Qasim took over the management of the school, who left it at the end of 1974.

My father, Mr. Ismail, graduated from the General Teachers’ Institute in Sana’a in 1973/1974, and the Ministry of Education sent him to Al-Falah School in the 1974/1975 school year to work as a teacher, and he became its director for the 1975/76 and 1976/77 school years. In the 1976/1977 academic year, Al-Falah School is ranked first in the performance evaluation at the level of the Republic (was known as the Yemen Arab Republic).

My father says: “The school director was a well-known figure, Mr. Abdul Samad Hazza Moqbel, may God have mercy on him, and Al Falah School was a beacon of scientific, educational and cultural activity. The credit is not only due to the good management of the school and its staff, but to the effort of the Parents Council and the youth and mothers of the village. The teaching classes was placed in one hand and the activities accompanying the educational process and participating in administrative work, such as archiving and preparing records on the other hand. Our working hours started at 7:30 in the morning and ended at sunset with the call to prayer of sunset, and we might continue to work until late at night, and we slept at school sometimes".

My father told me that on some days, he and most of the school teaching staff would meet and chew qat in the afternoon at the home of the headmaster, Abdul Samad Hazaa Moqbel, to discuss cultural and scientific activities or to discuss the level of administrative work being done. Most of those days, they slept at his house, and in the early morning they go to their work in the school.

School Activities

Theatrical activity was among the activities that the Al-Falah School was promoting, and among the plays represented by the students was the play “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare. The Palestinian theater director Hussein Asmar referred in his book “Theater in Yemen: Experience and Ambition” to the school theater in isolated villages of Al-Aaboos.

The communal solidarity in the village to invest in education was evident, my father said. For example, village youth - especially those studying at the university level - would attend school and participate in various activities. During the mid-year vacation, they would attend school board meetings to discuss educational, cultural and social issues of interest to the village. Moreover, they used to open the school in the summer vacation and hold revision classes as a review of what was taught in the last school year, in addition to introducing some new lessons from the new year curriculum before the beginning of the next school year.

Moreover, my father points out that once upon the time a committee of young educated people was formed to develop a simplified curriculum to start teaching English language from the fourth grade of primary school (currently studying English is from the seventh grade) to contribute to eliminating the students' illiteracy in the foreign language and break the ice and fear of many in learning English. He says the results were unexpectedly amazing, and the fourth-grade students who studied English at that level were of the most outstanding students in the school.

Furthermore, among key educational issues, the idea of ​​opening a pre-kindergarten class (before the first grade of primary school) was discussed a second time. Thus, a class was opened in which children who did not exceed the school age and have a desire to learn were enrolled, and the first teacher for this class was Mr. Ali Muhammad Naji Saleh.

My father says, "The students who studied in the preparatory class were among the best in their academic achievement. We have designed merit certificates for them out of photographic paper, and we would emboss the certificates and decorate them with flowers."

My father also mentioned that many activities were held in the school including scouting, sports, health and social activities. My father, as he mentioned, found the fruit of those who preceded him in his work in the school, such as Professor Abdel Halim Saif Muhammad, who was credited with establishing the sports activity for the first time in the history of the school, where he worked to form a football team, and it was a distinguished team. My father also stated that Professor Mustafa Pasha Naji had clear marks on some students in learning Arabic calligraphy. This was when they performed their compulsory teaching service in the academic years 1972/1973 and 1973/1974.

Theatrical activity was among the activities of the Falah School during that period, and my father mentioned that among the plays that were held was the “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare, as my father helped in preparing these plays. The Palestinian theater director Hussein Asmar referred in his book "Theater in Yemen: Experience and Ambition" to the school theater in the villages of the isolation of the Al-Aboos.

My father also referred to a funny incident that happened to him in 1999. He says: "I was looking for the book "The Theater in Yemen" by Hussein Asmar, however, and while I was in a shop that sells fish and frying, I saw a paper sheet from Hussein Asmar's book that I was looking for! I found that the fish shopkeeper was wrapping the fried fish with papers he had torn from the book, and only half of the book was left. But fortunately, I found another copy of the same book next to it, and nothing was torn from it, so I asked the fishmonger for the book in exchange for giving him a large amount of papers and old school books. And the fish seller was very happy about that. I was so lucky to find a version of the book, which I had searched for a lot, with the owner of the fish by chance! What strange coincidences!"