Bûhar Kobanê / JINHA

QAMIŞLO - The excitement of the new school year is beginning in Cizîr, in the Rojava Cantons. Qamişlo Language and Education Academy member Pȇyman Perî said that educators, most of them women, have worked to create a new model for education for years. All belief systems and cultures will be included in the model.

The new school year has started in Cizîr and Efrîn Cantons; it will start in October in Kobanȇ. In Rojava, the testing of a new education model is getting attention. The Democratic Society Education Congress occurred this year. Now, important systemic progresses are taking place in education studies. According to decisions approved in the congress, the system of education will be in Kurdish from the first grade to third. Arab and Assyrian children will get education in their native languages. The language will be Kurdish in Kobanȇ and Efrîn from the first grade to sixth grade.

Pȇyman Perî said that they started their work under difficult conditions. “The system tries to create disidentification and to make an uncultured society by forcing people to abandon their languages. In spite of their purposes, we are starting a new era by putting our emphasis on Kurdish education,” she said.

Pȇyman said that they provided a basis for education in native languages before the revolution. “We started language studies with the Rojava revolution and then it was institutionalized. Kurdish people gave lessons in their houses before the Rojava revolution; some families were arrested because of the oppression of the Ba’ath Party,” she said.

“Women are pioneers and leaders of the system of democratic life,” she said. “Women have been carrying on all work in Rojava. By creating their democratic system, they are giving Kurdish education to their children against assimilation politics. Women have a great role in Rojava by struggling and saving their culture. The pioneers of the studies of Kurdish education are nearly 95% women.”

Pȇyman said that their next project would be to open a university in Qamişlo.

(rc/at/fk/ea/cm)