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Reem Zaitoon

Karen Tucker

ENC2135

11 November 2015

The Consequences of the Syrian War on Syrian Education

The Syrian refugee crisis is no doubt one of the most horrifying and striking

humanitarian crises of our time. It is currently endangering the lives of around 4,183,535

Syrians who are directly affected by the violence in Syria (UNHCR). From what the

news has told the general population, rebel groups and religious extremists are forcing

Syrians out of their country through unyielding violence, torture, and bombings of

schools and homes. However, in order to leave their war-ridden country Syrians must

risk their necks and pay a very high price in order to seek an unguaranteed safety. The

horrors they face are extremely dangerous and choppy waters in small, unstable and weak

boats. Many children have drowned in hopes of seeking shelter away from the war back

home. However, most people are not aware of these facts. Most people when they think

about the Syrian refugees think of “some ocean that they had to cross” and had to leave

“that place with all the war.” Don’t you think that for a humanitarian crises that has

caused the deaths of over 100,000 and the displacement of 11 million people deserves

more concrete descriptions and awareness than the amorphous language of “that place”

and “some ocean”?1 I believe that they do. I believe that they, too, deserve a voice and a

speaker on their behalf that can raise accurate, stable, and important information about

their stories.

                                                                                                                 

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The children of Syria are stripped of basic rights to have a childhood and to have

an education because of the violence and the war that has stood as a barrier for them to

acquire these basic rights. More than one million Syrian children have been forced to

flee their war-torn country. One in every three of these refugees is between 12 and 17.

This is the generation that will be the one to rebuild Syria and the destruction that it bore.

However, they are missing out on critical life lessons such as building social skills,

enriching their confidence, and most importantly, getting an education. Based on a study

called Advancing Adolescence hosted in refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq,

and Turkey, Syrian refugee youth are facing daily obstacles that stop them from being

children and having an education. The study also describes ways to prevent the

generation that is tasked with rebuilding Syria in the future from becoming a lost one.

According to the study, of the 1.5 million refugee children under the age of 18

living outside of Syria, one in four is in the sensitive and adolescent age 12-17. Hopwood

provides that these young people continue to miss critical educational and social

moments in their lives, which in turn deny the country of Syria a productive and working

youth that it will need in order to reassemble and rebuild its shattered economy and

infrastructure in the future (85). The study was done by the humanitarian organization

Mercy Corps and it believes that Syrian refugee and host-community youngsters living in

host countries such as Jordan and Lebanon represent a critical investment for Syria’s

future that requires careful attention today. The reason why I am choosing to focus on the

children of Syria instead of the elderly or the adult population is because of this very

reason: they hold in their hands the key to rebuilding their country and to have a safer and

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confined place that they can work together to build. These children have not yet been

exposed to all of Syria’s horrors and they hold more hope than anybody else in their

country. In addition, they have time in order to build the skills required in order to help

rebuild their war-devastated country.

So what exactly started this whole problem? What caused for the destruction of

an entire country and nearly an entire generation of people? The war undoubtedly

induced tremendous sorrow and pain on Syria, but let’s find out why and how the

problem escalated into the war it is today. Pro-democracy protests started in March of

2011 when a few teenagers drew democracy slogans on the side of a building. Security

forces opened fire on civilians who were opposing the President Assad’s regime. After

news of the violent outbursts broke out, civilians took to the streets and started fighting

Assad’s security forces. The country quickly fell into civil war in which rebel groups

were pitted against the country’s regime. The conflict is now more than just an Assad

versus the people deal. It now includes religious overtones in which the country’s Sunni

majority fights the government’s Shia.

The Syrian refugee crisis is undeniably horrendous and a terrible thing to happen

all around. However, it is happening and it is still continuing to get even worse. More

than four years after it began, the Syrian civil war has killed over 220,000 people, most of

which were civilians (“Syrian Civil War). These numbers are continuing to grow

everyday, as only those fortunate enough to afford a boat ride across the Mediterranean

Sea have even the slight chance of surviving. Although the numbers are rising and more

and more people are being displaced and killed everyday because of the violent war, I

believe that the single hope for Syria at this time is its youth population and its children.

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This hope is powerful and can do so much for Syria’s future. However, Syria’s youth

and children are not being protected and preserved in the way that they should be.

Adolescents currently lack the sufficient psychological support in addition to educational

and skill building programs (Hopwood, 67) They are either missing access to these things

or they are using their time in order to do more important things, such as surviving,

helping their families or siblings make a living, or seeking shelter (“Voices of Syria's

Youth: What It's like to Grow up as a Refugee”). Girls have it worst of all. They are

forced to stay indoors where it is safest for them and help out with housework. The

repercussions of losing this vital and precious generation of young people are destructive

for Syria’s already bleak future. Syria would have no future to build for and it would not

have the workforce and the minds necessary to put the broken Syria back together.

Not having an educated Syrian youth to put back together the shattered Syria

would be like if someone dropped a vase on the ground and not made any effort to put it

back together with some glue and varnish. A broken vase can be put back together with

the right skill and hand using glue and varnish to mend it back together again. Sure, it

would not look the same, but it would still hold together for the most part and be

identifiable as a flower-holding container. The same thing goes for the absence of an

educated youth for Syria. Syria desperately needs a youth that can rebuild its society and

infrastructure. Simply put, by investing in the young people of Syria today, we have a

greater hope for their tomorrow. And that means putting in the money into their

education, their psychological and mental health facilities, and into their basic shelter and

safety needs. Because a child should not be having to worry about if someone will

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kidnap them while they’re sleeping or if their parents are dead. They should be worrying

about if they did their homework well enough or if they will make friends at their school.

The educational issues of Syrian children and the detrimental effects they will

have on Syria’s future are huge and present in the lives of Syria’s children. Because Syria

is now an inhabitable wasteland of conflict and violence, many refugee children are

forced to live in neighboring “host” countries. But even the extended hand of countries

like Jordan and Lebanon can’t possibly afford or accommodate for the needs of all the

children. However, Jordan’s government has set aside priorities for Syrian children

including healthcare, infrastructure, and most importantly, education (“UNHCR Stories

From Syrian Refugees”). Although education and schooling is a number one government

priority for Syria’s children, some of the schools have become far too old and in need of

maintenance that they are demolished. Another huge problem is overpopulation. Syrian

refugees are by no means a little puddle of need-based children but rather an ocean of

desperate kids who are not getting an education simply because of the sheer number of

them. Classrooms are overcrowded and many schools use block scheduling which

consequentially leads to the shortening of classes to 35 minutes from 45 (Municipal

Needs Assessment Report). In addition, teachers have to work overtime and are not

compensated for their extra time. On top of all of these hardships, Syrian children face

discrimination against Jordanian parents who insist that their children be separated from

Syrian children at school (UNHCR).

Jordan is a very important component in understanding the Syrian refugee crisis

merely because of its geographical location to it and because of the number of refugees it

has taken in thus far. Also, Jordan now internationally faces an expectation and a

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responsibility to uphold the standard for safety and municipal needs of the Syrians

(“Municipal Needs Assessment Report”). The conflict in Syria started in 2011 yet the

overspill of it is still taking a toll on Jordanian host countries. Jordan is a huge hope for

the Syrians. Its municipal and public policies have the greatest chances of saving what

could be a good portion of the Syrian children. Jordan has effectively maintained an

open border policy since the start of Syria’s civil war, but this has resulted in a massive

influx of helpless people flooding into the country. This sudden and overwhelming

influx of refugees proved to be challenging for Jordan’s municipal service and for its

social and economic makeup. For example, heavy tolls on Jordanians are seen in the

northern part of the country where over 600,000 Syrians live and push Jordan’s

population by 11% (“Municipal Needs Assessment Report”).

Despite the discouragement held by the vulnerability of Jordan’s around 83,232

Syrian Children were registered to start public school in Jordan in 2013 (UNHCR). More

importantly, despite efforts to encourage Syrian children to enroll in Jordan’s public

schools, over 60% of 250,000 school-aged Syrians are still unregistered (UNHCR). This

is a pre-existing problem that the Jordanian government has been dealing with since the

arrival of the refugees. Because of the war and the violence that Syrian families have had

to get away from, teachers complain that Syrian children are behind their Jordanian peers

because of the war’s interruption. Other problems facing Syrian children in Jordan

include the difference in conservative values that stands in the way of their acquiring the

same education as Jordanians. Because Syrian children don’t have valid health

certificates, they are prone to rare diseases, which makes them unable to attend school.

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Also, transportation is not accessible to Syrians because they live in such scattered

locations and so this leads to a heightened risk of dropouts.

Overcrowded classrooms are a persistent problem that Syrians face in host

countries. The numbers of Syrians that come into Jordan surpass Jordan’s capacity to

house them all. Therefore, the quality of education has significantly dwindled in the last

few years. The quality of education in Jordan went from being called “very good” to

“poor.” Therefore, some of the municipalities called on Jordan include constructing new

education facilities in order to improve the quality of education for Jordanians and

Syrians. During interviews and discussions in Lebanon, 66% of the 80 children that were

asked about education said that they were not currently in school. That’s a drastic

number and if it doesn’t change soon, Syria risks having and under-educated generation.

And in turn, it has no generation to save it.

For many of the refugee children, school is a safe place where they can be free to

grow and learn and make friends. It is a gateway in which they can establish some sort of

normalcy in their lives. Although parents and students say that teachers have been very

kind and supportive towards the children, Syrian children still need much more attention

and help because there are just so much of them.

As aforementioned, the influx of refugee children has taken a dramatic toll on the

host countries. Not all teachers are trained to deal with children who suffer from the

psychological issues of the Syrian children. There is a significant gap in the mental

illness awareness and education on the teacher’s part that is preventing Syrian children

from recovering from the trauma of the war. Coupled with these inadequate resources,

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many say that the quality of education has gone down because of lack of funding due to

the rapid population rise.

Displacement, loss of and missing family members, death, and bombed homes

and schools are just a few of the horrors that the Syrian children are experiencing. These

horrors are persistently preventing them from acquiring an education. In addition, Syrian

children receive verbal abuse from their peers and their teachers. Teachers tell their

Syrian students that they have “ruined this country” and they are dropping out of school

rapidly because of it. The problem isn’t that these kids don’t want to be educated. The

problem is that they don’t want to get educated at the cost of their self-respect.

As you can see, the problem and the consequences are multi-faceted. The Syrians

suffer tremendously because of their war-ridden country and because of the fact that

everything is taken from them. But as I have discussed here, their education is what can

propel them to a higher place. It is what can give Syria a fighting chance to become

renewed and whole again. At the price of war and danger, Syrians are perishing and

becoming a lost and uneducated generation full of aimless and empty souls. Without

education, Syria probably can’t exist like it did in the past again.

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Works Cited

ACCESS TO EDUCATION FOR SYRIAN REFUGEE CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN

JORDAN HOST COMMUNITIES. JOINT EDUCATION NEEDS

ASSESSMENT REPORT. N.p.: UNICEF, 2015. Print.

Ayres, Sabra. "In a Struggling Balkan Economy, Smuggling Is Good Business." In

Struggling Balkans, Smuggling Is Good Business. Aljazeera America, 10 Oct.

2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Hopwood, Derek. Syria 1945-1986: Politics and Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.

Print.

"Mitigating the Impact of the Syrian Refugee Crisis on Jordanian Vulnerable Host

Communities." UNDP in Jordan. United Nations Development Programme,

2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

"New Initiative Launched to Better Understand Future Learning Needs of Syrian Refugee

Youth | Education | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization." New Initiative Launched to Better Understand Future Learning

Needs of Syrian Refugee Youth | Education | United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO, 2015.

"Syrian Civil War | Syrian History." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia

Britannica, 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

"Syria Profile - Overview - BBC News." BBC News. BBC News, 25 June 2015. Web. 11

Oct. 2015.

"UNHCR Stories from Syrian Refugees." UNHCR Stories from Syrian Refugees. The UN

Refugee Agency, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

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“UNHCR: Total Number of Syrian Refugees Exceeds Four Million for First Time.”

UNHCR

News. The UN Refugee Agency, n.d. Web.11 Oct. 2015.

"Voices of Syria's Youth: What It's like to Grow up as a Refugee." Mercy Corps. Mercy

Corps, 20 June 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.