Schools should be a place of learning, not stress

This article is part of a series titled: “Reimagining Education”

A school should be a place students feel supported and instilled with a life-long love of learning. Instead, that is often not the case in schools in Kurdistan.

As a university student, I often struggled with anxiety and depression. Now that I work as a professional educator, I see that the Kurdish education system is a factory, manufacturing a mentality that stresses achievement without addressing the psychological needs of developing minds. 

The anxiety that many students feel begins with the pressures of society. Parents expect their children to score high marks, gain admission to a prestigious university to study medicine, earn a well-paying job — the pressure never stops until they reach the grave.

This leaves young people stressed, depressed, desperately afraid of failure, and leaves out our society lacking collective imagination. The education system of previous generations commands students to be submissive, me and stay inside the conventional standards of their families’ narrow paradigms of success.

Not becoming a doctor is seen as the equivalent of being poor and sick, a failure  in every sense. It drives teachers to pay more attention to those students who are high-achieving – perhaps two to three students in every class – and exclude the majority of students from being engaged.  This ultimately leads to a dreadful learning environment where the majority of students are ignored.

The idea that only those students who choose to pursue medical degrees can be considered ‘real students’ reinforces a grave misunderstanding.

When our students are beset with unresolved anxieties, they internalize them. Confined to a short list of possibilities that society has presented them with, they cannot explore their own unique potential, and cannot be free to live a life of their own. Achieving ranks and titles only mean something when a student  combines knowledge and work ethic with moral values that direct them to seek a positive impact on the world.

Teaching without psychological awareness and preparedness results in two obvious problems: frustration and failure. A domineering teacher can teach, but they will never be able to inspire. 

When teachers take care of their students not only intellectually but also psychologically, they feel empowered to build their own lives, while holding a sense of responsibility to the community they exist within.

When students trust their teachers to share their ambitions and their anxieties, that is a fruitful learning environment. When both achievements and failures are accepted as a natural part of the learning process — rather than rigid managerial rules imposed — then students can truly start to explore.

In the 13 years I was a student in public schools I did not see a single psychologist.  I have taught in four over-crowded schools that had both morning and evening shifts, but only one of them had a psychologist on staff.

Although school psychologists do exist in Kurdish public schools, they are limited. They do not have actual teaching hours within the weekly timetable, and usually only teach when teachers of other subjects are on leave or absent. This underscores pivotal concerns since the formation of the first Kurdish cabinet in 1992.  

According to statistics provided by Kurdistan Region’s Psychologist and Sociologist Syndicate, only one in four schools in the Kurdistan region has a psychologist or social worker on staff. 

Nabil Salih, an administrator in the Sulaimani Department of Education, tells me that of the 1,500 teachers in the district, only 25 are social workers or psychologists. “Many graduates in our area are ready to serve and we are in dire need of their skills,” he said. “We urge the government to employ them because surely they will have a great impact guiding and mentoring children from a young age.”  

Even though my generation experienced the brutality of the Baath regime from 1980 to 1991, and the Civil War from 1993 to 1998, successive Kurdistan Regional Governments’ Ministry of Education and Higher Education Ministry failed to understand the profound impact that those two periods in our history have brought about.

In the 1990s, the main objective of the Kurdish public schools and universities was to produce a sufficient number of graduates to fill the positions in the government left vacant as a result of the withdrawal of the Baath regime. 

What they ignored was creating a safe space for entire generations of Kurds to recover from the traumas they had experienced both individually and collectively. 

Previous leaders of the KRG have swept the psychological tragedies of our generation under the carpet, and that was a mistake. The new cabinet should take into serious consideration the necessity of providing psychological care of students and teachers through national and international workshops, seminars, courses, and symposiums. 

Aras Ahmed Mhamad is a writer and teacher at the University of Sulaimani's Language and Culture Centre.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.