IRAQI STUDENTS ARE FAILING EXAMS IN RECORD NUMBERS

The fallout of invading and occupying Iraq continues way beyond what is being reported by the mainstream media.

The latest victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq are Iraq students who are failing exams and have resorted to cheating just to try and pass courses.

IRAQ: Students Fail, Like So Much Else

By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43491

BAGHDAD, Aug 8 (IPS) - Living from one crisis to another, without electricity or freedom to move under a collapse of security, massive numbers of Iraqi students are failing their exams."It is a natural result of what is going on in Iraq under this U.S. occupation that so many Iraqi students failed the high school exams," Mahmood Jassim, a teacher in Baghdad told IPS. "How can a student pass such difficult exams feeling terrified, exhausted in the heat, in darkness without electricity, having to work in the absence of a dead or detained father, and all the problems of the world over his head." Jassim says about 75 percent of his students are failing their exams. "I am ashamed of the results my school achieved this year," a school headmaster in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "I cannot tell you what percentage we achieved because that will reveal me and my school. You do not really believe we are living in a democratic country, do you?"

Two headmasters, who also spoke on condition of anonymity given the prevailing atmosphere of fear, said school results showed sectarian divisions – and not for the best of reasons. Shia schools, they alleged, ran a loose invigilation system that allowed students to cheat. Some teachers believe most students who passed their exams did so by cheating. "Those who cheated have passed while the honest failed," Ghanim Jamil, a teacher in Baghdad told IPS.

"If a student is the son of a senior government official or of a member of an armed group, how can we stop them from cheating? We would be killed."

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