Reaction in Damascus?

News agencies and newspapers have relayed, with a certain incredulity, the report of the communiqué recently issued by the Syrian Ministry of Education, forbidding clubs and private schools to include girl students together with boys in the formations put on for special occasions, and in radio programs.

What manner of communiqué is this?! How far it stands from our modern understanding of the foundations of sound education!! It is a slap in the face of those young women who are making ready, in their near tomorrow, to exercise their political rights!!

We can understand a communiqué of this sort being issued in a sister country still far removed from the renaissance of civilization, where a law has been enacted forbidding any girl whatsoever to enroll in school!! But that such a communiqué should be issued in Syria — that gives cause for astonishment, and for questions as to the intentions of the Minister of Education.

Communiqués, Your Excellency, must be in harmony with the stage of progress the country has traversed; otherwise they provoke a negative reaction of shrinking back between the sexes, one that drags the country backward, and they become, in consequence, a scandalous manifestation of that odious reaction which we had supposed we and you had finished coming to terms over!

And we ask ourselves, further, whether it would not be well for a Minister of Education who draws his inspiration from such communiqués to step aside for one worthier of the post — for one graced with an open mind, versed in the spirit of the age, who leads the rising generation forward... not backward!!