Lana playing in a Ranya Symphony Orchestra concert

Once you’re in your fifth year of studies to become a teacher in Iraq, you start training in a primary school or a kindergarten. It takes about forty days, and on some of them, your professors come to the class and evaluate your teaching. When they’re there, it’s important to give an exam that shows off your abilities and what have you learned during those five years.

It can be confusing because we’re expected to be both good teachers at the primary level and good artists. I guess that would work if we could teach what we had learned, but we can’t. Artistic knowledge and theory still aren’t part of the basic curriculum in schools. Plus our professors don’t follow any set curriculum, and there’s not a settled method for approaching music like there is in other subjects. So that leads to some misunderstandings between the institute’s management and education ministry. They need to clarify what they want from us. The ministry asks the institute to produce teachers, but the institute wants us to be both teachers and artists without having a good curriculum for combining the two.

I talked with two of my friends about their studies at the arts institute we attended. Lana, a 22-year-old flutist who graduated in 2010, started by saying that in the first two years she was very happy that her family didn’t stop her from coming to the institute and studying her dream subject, music. But she got bored by the time she was a third year student. She was expecting something other than what she got.

“I have no idea why should I study so many extra subjects. Do I need to learn my native language if I want to be a flute player?” she said in surprise.

She also talked to me about the training she did at a kindergarten.

“I had to do everything for the kids: Play music for them, be a storyteller, take them out for recess and whatever else the management required. I had no problem doing all of that, even though it wasn’t really my job. I felt really satisfied that the kids liked me to be everything for them,” Lana said.

Lana taking part in a sporting event in the kindergarten where she worked

Now she’s a member of the Ranya Symphony Orchestra, and she certainly doesn’t have any problems with her native language when the conductor is talking, she told me with a laugh.

I talked to another girl who didn’t want me to mention her name or any other personal information. She said that her family reluctantly agreed she could study music. But when she was asked to travel to another city for a concert for school, her parents got angry and didn’t let her go.

“That was a very hard moment for me, but I had no choice. I pretended to be sick and said I couldn’t play the concert. My family has always prevented me from taking part in musical activities. That’s why I could not make much progress with my studies. I graduated with very low marks, but despite that, I was almost happy that the institute’s directors showed some consideration for me,” she told me sadly.

As artists, we are happy that we can present art to people and gradually introduce them to ways of understanding it, but we still have work to do in supporting women who are interested in art and music.

Playing together with a friend at our institute's annual festival

In my last entry, I talked about the problems in Iraq’s fine arts institutes. In the last decades in Kurdistan, I think people have come to a better understanding of art in general – and music specifically – but this is not true in every area of my country. Some families do not allow their girls to study music – or sometimes even their boys – because of religious beliefs or because they think it’s inappropriate to make music. You’ll find this view mostly among people who live in the countryside but also among people who have left their villages for small towns or cities or, finally, those with very conservative minds. I know a famous Kurdish musician who studied music for five years away from his hometown without letting his father know what he was studying there. It was only after he graduated that his father found out – otherwise he would have stopped his son’s studies.

When I started studying music, I was living in a place that people rejected music and musicians. Even some of my closest friends laughed at me and my hobby. But I always told myself that I was stronger than the things pushing me to change my path. What drove me crazy was that most of the people were listening to music and Kurdish songs over the TVs and Radios. I could never understand why even though they seemed to enjoy music, they would also make a point of rejecting it? It mostly came down to religion. I remember that Islamic TV stations were not using music for any of their programs – news excluded – but gradually they changed their stance, too.

That change helped make people think differently than in the past. On the other hand, views were very different in the big cities like Erbil, Sulaymaneyah and Duhok. These places have a long history of struggling and making sacrifices to resist social pressure.

My brother, Chia, the bass player

I was lucky that my family was different. Both of my parents are from a village near Iran’s border. My father had to leave school straight after finishing primary school due to political reasons and crisis. Instead of studying, he had to become a warrior. But he was still able to develop many talents like singing, painting, poetry, nice handwriting and playing a Kurdish musical instrument, the shimshal.

The luckier one in my family, though, is my little brother. He also applied to study music at a fine arts institute. He was very lazy when he was in secondary school, and finishing it was a huge chore for him. But when he started to study music, I found him very clever. He chose to play the double bass. But lots of ordinary people here don’t even know what his instrument is. Sometimes he has to answer lots of dumb questions: How can you like that sound? Would you use it as a boat? Why did you choose such an instrument? Is it a violin that got bigger in water?

But what is there to say? Some people have no idea…

Proud to be shaping the future of Iraq

In my country, it should really be the case that the education process reflects individual perspectives as well as developments throughout the world. However, we have a lot of problems there. Until recently, Iraq’s dictatorial government, like all the other parts of life here in Iraq, were big obstacles to education. Schools were prevented from developing and kept circling around a limited range of ideas.

In my view, education in this country needs to start from zero with a new system that suits a modernized world. This is not an easy thing to do, and it would take a very long time and much sacrifice. Iraq has various regions, and, at the moment, there are two different educational systems at work.

Iraqi education is still in its beginning phases, still facing so many problems that deny its potential. The most visible problems are political unrest, struggles between parties and their sub-organizations, and parts of society have a conservative point of view on education. Political unrest is a big reason that the Ministry of Education cannot have a permanent plan to build and develop educational processes. Everything changes with each new government and its cabinets. I would definitely say that the Ministry’s affairs are not conducted systematically. We also must think about how Iraq is not one of the world’s poorer countries – even in the past – but is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. So the question is: why are things on the right course? That question would take much more than such a blog to clarify.

The new generation has a different attitude toward learning...

Nonetheless, we are still keeping the educational system going, and won’t let it fade, despite having various problems with its progress. I think we can find solutions and solve all of the educational problems in the future. If we could improve education in Iraq, the other parts of our country and society would improve automatically. This is my dream and the dream of every loyal person in this country. That is why I’m interested in this issue.

When I was a student, I saw very few opportunities – unlike in the new generation, everything was much more limited. Everything in this country suffered on account of the wars. But people got a better education then than now. I wasn’t studying just to pass the exams. The point was learning. But I think students now are studying just to pass the exams and gain high marks. This is another big problem we face, and I will be writing about this issue more in my next blogs.

As a teacher, I’m happy with my work because I feel that I contribute to the most important facet for improving my country. I work with a very warm heart, and do not feel hopeless about all of the troubles and obstacles standing in the way of educational progress. We see change gradually. And even if it’s not big change, at least we are not stuck at the same point forever or going backwards.