Life conditions are changing at a rapid pace, affecting multiple aspects of people's lives and fates, including the education, which is suffering a shocking deterioration at various levels in Yemen. With the launch of each new schooling year, parents hope for their children to have an academic year that is full of good promises and wishes.
Yemen historically suffered from several conflicts that had extend over time, and each war casts a shadow on the life of the people on all aspects, especially education, which has been witnessing an unprecedented setback since the interruption of the salaries of Yemeni teachers - nearly eight years ago - as a result of which teachers experienced the bitterness of harsh living.
In fact, the country recently lives under the reality of two educational policies, each one weaker than the other. The public policy that manages the educational situation in Sanaa adopts methods that are weird to society, and violate international, Arab, and local standards. The Sana'a authority also sought to bring about changes in the curricula of the first grades to suit the ideology of the controlling group.
The scene is tragic and painful, and it seems that there is no solution in sight. What is flashing is nothing more than an offhand policy that is destructive to education that is based on consolidating ignorance and expanding its scope in line with the interests of the controlling parties.
A policy that suffocates the daily livelihood of Yemeni teachers in the north. If they - i.e. the Houthi group – decided to teachers, it pays half a salary, that will hardly cover their living, but will not remove the burden of debts that strain their shoulders or meets part of the high cost of living on all levels. As a result, the teacher was unable to secure his present, nor was he able to pay his accumulated debts, nor was he able to hope for relief in the future.
The scene is tragic and painful, and it seems that there is no solution in sight. What is flashing is nothing more than an offhand policy that is destructive to education that is based on consolidating ignorance and expanding its scope in line with the interests of the controlling parties.
On the other hand, the recognized government in Aden is still unable to extend its control over the governorates it rules, as there are some parties outside its framework still holding control of some areas, such as the Southern Transitional Council.
Although the recognized government pays teachers’ salaries regularly, the salaries are paid in its collapsed currency, which has no value in the face of the high cost of living, and therefore these salaries do not meet the most basic requirements of the helpless teachers. Despite all the appeals to support teachers and improve their living conditions in light of the high prices and the collapse of the currency, these appeals fell on deaf ears and went unnoticed.
In light of this disastrous educational reality, teachers hope that the educational situation will return to its state before the war, but they clash with the de facto authorities who do not pay any attention to the enthusiasm that appears here or there, and soon it fades with the directions of the authorities whose priorities do not include education, even if it praised it in the media. The existing authorities deliberately impoverished the teacher and besieged him, either by depriving him of his salary for years, or giving him a salary that would hardly protect him from hunger.
At the level of school curricula, books of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, too, are still contemporary with ancient times in terms of outdated topics and lessons that are far from the present time in which we live.
Educational outcome is still a concern that worries parents of students and makes them anxious, so they wish that simple changes could be made by the existing official authorities by paying attention to the teacher, who is the core of the educational process.
We cannot disregard one bitter fact, which is that the current educational curricula have also become a direct cause of weakening the outcomes and quality of education today, as they have not been updated for more than fifteen years so that it become outdated and not in line with the reality of contemporary life.
Therefore, the poor curricula have not been subjected to methodological modernization that keeps pace with the developments of the times and its resilient spirit. It is mired in a distant past, not only in humanities subjects, but even at the level of scientific subjects, that suffer from obvious weakness, which can be observed in the science textbook for or the middle grades, which is still steeped in its traditionalism.
At the level of school curricula, books of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, too, are still contemporary with ancient times in terms of outdated topics and lessons that are far from the present time in which we live.
Moreover, school students, in turn, while they are watching such a bitter and fragile reality in front of them, which doubles their aversion to education, as they can easily acquire through the open space, rather than by attending neglected schools deprived of laboratories and educational tools, or learning it from starving and outdated teachers, and old-fashioned curricula whose eternity ate and drank the ink of its aged old pages
In conclusion, the situation calls for community solidarity for the sake of preserving, improving and modernizing education, and saving students from their miserable and alienating reality.
