Mobile phones - literacy not required...

The recent history of education in Iraq is full of ups and downs, and illiteracy, especially for women, remains a problem.

I’d like to imagine seeing life and the world like through the eyes of an uneducated person. But I think this is much harder than imagining it through a genius’ eyes. I know so many uneducated people – the only thing they can read and understand is the clock. I wonder how they can use mobile phones…? They can use their contacts to dial, and they seem to know who is calling them! Maybe after lots of mistakes, they just figure out how to use their phones. In fact, it could even be a kind of adventure for them!
Maybe when you get tired of what you’re doing or when your tendency to think too much makes you unhappy, you wish you were one of the uneducated people – that you knew nothing. I think sometimes you’re luckier to have less knowledge. I would say, “Less knowledge means more comfort.” That is why I think that the less educated do enjoy life much more than those with an academic background.

On average, the most uneducated people are among the seniors, especially among older women. Men always had a better and more comfortable life in the Middle East because of their unlimited freedoms. In my third entry, I talked about education for girls starting with the very young and showed connections between our system and problems within our society.

Some have to take out a loan to cover monthly expenses - even for basics

At the moment, we have obvious educational gaps among young people. Many of them have not been to school for various reasons. Many had to work for their families from an early age, and some of the families did not enroll their kids in school because they did not think that the school would teach their children what they needed to learn. Or they thought that the government wouldn’t be able to give them a job in the future anyway.

Another issue is that many in the young generation leave school and start doing another job because they can’t earn enough money monthly even if they were to get a job after graduating. An obvious example is that new teachers earn about $500 a month, but if you work as a freelance worker, you would earn$25 per day, totaling $750 per month. Many people think that they are right to quit school because the salary system for government jobs is not fair. Your salary does not depend on how many hours of work you do per week, but, rather, depends on what role you have or where you work. There are fears of getting old and realizing that you have spent your whole life on a governmental assignment, but you’re still dreaming of life’s basic necessaries like having a car, a normal house and enough money to get by. Some have to take out loans just for living expenses, so it’s clear that saving money doesn’t even come into question.

Conductor Paul MacAlindin and a soloist

As I promised in my last entry, I did an interview over the Internet with NYOI’s musical director Paul MacAlindin, from Scotland and now living in Cologne, Germany.

– Mr. MacAlindin, how has the NYOI’s music improved academically since the orchestra’s founding?
Paul MacAlindin: Arab, Kurdish and classical music have systems that need to be internalized before you can really connect your soul with sound. The war and a generally negative perception of the arts has kept people from learning those systems. However, no one can prevent that part of the human brain which exists only to make music from finding a way to express itself. So young Iraqis have found their way intuitively to making music through difficult times. Music has become a comfort, a barrier against the chaos and violence. The Internet has replaced teachers.

NYOI brings teachers into Iraq to coach young players. We do this in a very intense course, which shows players what’s possible when they are given a chance. Those teachers who left Iraq during the invasion may never come back, but we have given those that are courageous enough to stay hope that they can get real support, now and in future.

Sustained conflict conditions people to be helpless, afraid and focused on survival, even when war is over. NYOI players and friends have set up their own projects to start challenging that mentality, and learn empowerment. I believe that some of the current good practice in Iraq is directly and indirectly inspired by NYOI courses. NYOI players are already teaching what they’ve learnt from our tutors.

– What needs to be done or to be changed in the Iraqi musical schools?

Simply, a respectful dialogue with musicians outside Iraq; perhaps allowing a young teacher to come and work there for 6 months, or a visiting ensemble to be allowed to do a short residency.  Fundamentally, music brings people together. That can only happen when people feel safe enough to do so, and when they do, they create demand for more performances and better teaching.

Only then can musicians discuss what they need, and who to work with. At the heart of every musician’s success is mobility, and whether going to the next village or the next continent, is absolutely necessary.

Paul MacAlindin and I in Arbil

– What sounds strange when you try to make room for classical music inside people’s minds in the East? And how difficult is that at this moment?

If we’re discussing orchestral music, that’s easy because it’s already everywhere: film sound tracks, advertisements, hotel foyers, pop music all over the world. Kurdish and Arab music continually mixes clarinets, violins, cellos, flutes with traditional instruments, creating mixed orchestras. Do people really want to listen to a whole concert of orchestral music in silence? A lot of people in the West can’t even do that. But again, live music of all kinds, traditional or orchestral, brings people together, and doing so again and again creates the fabric of society, creating emotions and ideas instead of conflict.

– What you would like to say in closing?

A friend of mine, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who wrote NYOI a piece last year, said that a place doesn’t really exist if no one is performing music about it. The choice is to continue living in fear, half alive, or to allow your home to flourish with music.

Click here to head to the NYOI YouTube Channel.

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…

Are our fine arts institutes teaching us the right things?

Iraq’s fine arts institutes and colleges have made good progress in producing young artists in every creative field, but there are many issues still to talk about, and many things need to be changed in the system. I want to talk about the system in general in this post and go into more personal experiences in my next post.

I went to a fine arts institute, for which students in Iraq are eligible after finishing secondary school. In my experience, if you are interested in music, you should get started with it at a very early age – maybe between 3-5. Then you can learn to play naturally, and a similar argument could be made for other artistic fields.

Kids should get started early to master music

But let’s stop there for a minute: what is the government’s aim in investing in Fine Arts institutes? Is the aim to produce professional artists who study art academically? Or what is their specialty supposed to be after they graduate?

I would say the government’s aim with fine arts institutes isn’t to produce professional artists, but, rather, to train teachers who can teach, say, a few national hymns and songs – in the case of music school graduates. In other cases, they might teach some basic knowledge of painting in the primary schools, but visual arts grads have less of a chance at getting jobs.

Still, among the grads we have so many good artists. But that is not thanks to the quality of courses or the teachers they had, but because of their love, goals and desires toward what they pursue.

Me and some of my colleagues

I also want to talk about specializations. Every field of art has many braches and off-shoots, but they aren’t represented in our fine arts institutes. That’s bad and confusing for the students and can even make them forget why they wanted to come to an arts institute in the first place. You’re required to study so many fields, despite some of them being unrelated to your specialty. For instance, I didn’t need to study my native language, because I can already speak it very well, and I won’t teach it in the future, so what is the point of making me study it? Is that not another kind of dictatorship? And what’s my specialization supposed to be after studying about 16 different things before I could graduate?

When I enrolled, I got bored and forgot why I came. That was what all my other friends felt, too. I went to an arts institute to learn to play violin professionally – not to be a language or children’s psychology expert. So by the time you graduate, you end up confused. Even if you are a good artist, you haven’t had the opportunity to improve your artistic abilities because the government will put you on the path to be a teacher. So there is little opportunity to learn because you’re giving everything and not taking anything away. That kills your love and desire for a job as an artist.

I think it’s all fine for someone who wants to be a teacher, but not for someone who wants to be an artist.

Gender equality - a lot has changed, but more needs to be done

I wanted to write about women in Iraq this weekend, so I decided to meet with some from different walks of life. That way I could have a better sense of what females are feeling and thinking about in life and how much freedom they feel like they have. Now I want to describe some of the highlights.

First, I met a friend who teaches at a primary school. She’s married and has a kid. She is quite pleased with the freedom women have in this century.

“This freedom is still not enough – though much better than what we had in past decades,” she said.

“I think it’s better for girls to get married to someone whose occupation is the same as hers or at least similar – that way they understand each other better. I have a child, though, so working can be a problem because I have to send him to a nursery, and I’m not sure whether he will be as well behaved as I want. But I have no choice,” my friend added.

Me, conducting interviews

Next I talked with an unemployed young woman who graduated from a media college three years ago. She got a government job at one point but is very upset with what happened.

“The work depended sometimes on whether they were in the mood to employ you. Other times it just depended on what they thought about your specialty and whether it was popular,” she said angrily.

The third one was an old woman who never got to go to school when she was young. She had tears in her eyes when she talked to me.

“Son,” she started to say very sweetly, “When I was young, I lived in a village with my family. We had no school in the village – we didn’t even know exactly what school was. It was just the mosques that would teach our men and boys how to learn to write and read. Sometimes they had to leave their villages to do so. Back then, very few women were allowed to study, and that was only in the big cities,” she said.

A brighter future for the next generation?

“I feel very sad that I can’t enjoy this life because I feel like a blind person: I can’t read or write or join in modern life. But, fortunately, I can see my kids and future generations living full lives now. I remember sometimes that a letter would come for someone in the village, and there was no one to read it. Instead, we had to wait until the men came back. In those days, that was very normal, but when I compare it with now, I feel like it was such a disaster,” she continued with a heavy heart.

I think these three examples showcase the status of women in general in my country. They also show that change has been made over time. I hope we can have a better life among these changes, but we still have to try to do more. As the young generation, we should work on changing how the people in government think.