Mixed Education in Iraqi Institutes

Miss Sabah Rushdi is an educated young Iraqi woman who teaches language in the government schools and devotes the rest of her time to public social service. Readers of The Woman's Voice have already become acquainted with her work in past issues.

In this article she speaks of the Iraqi girl's renaissance in the field of education, both academic and vocational, and of the wide strides she has taken in that arena, joining study and analysis with wishes and hopes.

The long dark period through which the Iraqi girl passed, and the crushing circumstances whose harshness and severity she suffered on account of custom, habits, and traditions, produced a far-reaching setback in every aspect of her life. It made her a captive of ignorance, her freedom fettered, understanding nothing of life but submission to man's will and resignation to him. She came to live a mechanical life, looking out at what surrounded her through black spectacles, owing to the interaction of the foundations of a sickly upbringing with the influences of the backward environment under whose sway she lived for a long stretch of time — all of which left a deep mark upon her spirit. She grew up with little confidence in herself, naive in her thinking, dependent on man for everything she needed. Her stamp was bashfulness and dread of the other sex — the opposite of what woman enjoys in advanced societies, owing to the difference of environment and circumstances through which the two beings have passed.

Those clouds soon began to lift from the horizon of the Iraqi girl's life once she ventured, some years ago, upon learning and the pursuit of knowledge, though within a limited compass that did not go beyond secondary schooling. The merit of this change that came over the Iraqi girl and altered the course of her life cannot be denied — a change we may call "the stage of transition" from her old pattern of life to another manner differing from it entirely, which affected her inner personal and mental makeup amid this tremendous cultural din, pulled this way and that by various intellectual currents and tendencies, and growing noisier the deeper one plunges into it. In this stage she was seized by intellectual confusion as a result of the collision of her desires with what her environment wanted of her, and hesitation clung to her: whether to content herself with this meager measure of knowledge, or to throw herself into this deep sea tossed by the various waves of learning. Yet she did not lack the daring to storm the field of higher study, to complete the elements of her culture side by side with the other sex, thereby surmounting the difficulties and obstacles that stood in her way.

Thus she smashed the doors that had been bolted in her face, freeing herself from the yoke of the pitch darkness in which she had lived for a long age, to enjoy the light of learning and culture. And she achieved success with distinction through the qualifications and competence she displayed, despite the harassments and vexations that confronted her at the outset.

Mixed education has driven away dread and removed bashfulness from the girl, for it enabled her to gain insight into the psychology of man, of which she had known nothing except by guess and conjecture; and higher study disclosed to her new horizons of which she had been ignorant in the recent past.

This education has proven, in practice, her worthiness of equality with man: she is with him in the field of learning, exchanging ideas, debating opinions, and matching him argument for argument, just as she stands before him face to face in the other walks of life. This heralds a blessed cultural renaissance, manifest in the girl's venturing to educate herself to a high standard — a clear proof of the Iraqi girl's pressing desire for study and attainment and her awareness of her natural right in life, and of her worthiness to occupy the place befitting her in society and to bear the responsibility of performing her national and social mission in the fullest manner and on an equal footing with man.

Thus has the idea of mixed education developed with the developments of the times; indeed, thus has the modern Iraqi girl come forth from those somber darknesses into the light of a kindled mind, to taste the sweetness of existence and the bliss of freedom in the ample shade of modern learning.

The Iraqi girl of today is other than she was yesterday, for she has covered very great distances in the various scientific, literary, and social branches. And when we know that the numerical proportion of girl students in the higher institutes is nearly a quarter or a third of the number of male students in the various institutes — such as the Higher Teachers' College, the colleges of Medicine, Law, Pharmacy, Commerce and Economics, and the College of Arts and Fine Arts — we grasp the strength of the girl students and the extent of their striving in the general cultural spheres. In the Higher Teachers' College, for example, there are several societies: some for drawing and sculpture, some for oratory and the organizing of festivities, some for music and acting. So too in the rest of the higher institutes, where the girl students have the amplest share.

It is perhaps important to mention that coeducation of the sexes began first in the College of Medicine, then the College of Law, then the Higher Teachers' College, then the remaining colleges. We note, however, that the College of Engineering has at present only one single girl student, no more; and it is believed that the policy of the Ministry of Education and its teaching program do not allow girl students to enter it, since no use would be made of them upon graduation. That on the one hand; on the other, we firmly believe that the coming years will witness an army of educated, conscious young women in the various higher institutes, as appearances indicate from girls' eagerness for higher learning.

Worth mentioning in this connection is what appeared in the general annual statistical compilation for 1947, where it is stated that the number of graduates of the Iraqi College of Law during the years 1942–1947 was 849 students; the number of graduates of the College of Medicine for the same years was 471 students; and the number of graduates of the Higher Teachers' College was 426 students. The proportion of girls among the graduates comes to 0.8% or approximately 10.0% — a proportion which, as I have said, is on the increase.

Unless resolve and zeal among the partisans of learning and those charged with responsibility prevail — smoothing away the obstacles, easing the paths for seekers of learning and knowledge, and refining the young and preparing them for every good — it will be difficult for us to take a single step up the stairways of progress and perfection. For coeducation in the higher institutes has become one of the necessities of social, cultural, and scientific life: it is a sound and correct solution to the problem of the age, and an unlocking of the locks of the time and the generation.