School & District Management

Education Struggles: One Iraqi Family’s Story

By Katie Ash — February 15, 2008 1 min read
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Education Week reporter Mary Ann Zehr, who posts frequently on her Learning the Language blog, just returned from a one-month stint in the Middle East. She wrote a number of fascinating dispatches while she was there, and her latest “Back in School, Iraqi Teen Lacks Motivation to Study” might be of particular interest to readers of this blog.

The circumstances surrounding the interruption of many Iraqi children’s education are complicated and difficult to summarize, so I highly recommend that you go read the entire story. Once Iraqi kids go back to school after a long interruption, they are often grouped in with students who are younger than them. Just like American students who find themselves in classes with significantly younger peers, displaced Iraqi students find it difficult to thrive and often drop out.

The hardships endured by the family described in Mary Ann’s story are heart-wrenching and certainly representative of what many Iraqi children are currently experiencing. Read more about Mary Ann’s experiences on one of her latest blog posts.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Motivation Matters blog.