Stateless Democracy

You have to educate, twenty-four hours a day, to learn
how to discuss, to learn how to decide collectively. You
have to reject the idea that you have to wait for some
leader to come and tell the people what to do, and instead
learn to exercise self-rule as a collective practice. The
people themselves educate each other. When you put ten
people together and ask them for a solution to a problem
or propose them a question, they collectively look for an
answer. I believe in this way they will find the right one.
This collective discussion will make them politicized.
— Salih Muslim, Democratic Union Party (PYD) Co-President,
November 2014
212–213
After the revolution of July 2012, when new self-governing
institutions came to power in Rojava, the need for a new
kind of education was paramount. Not that the people of
western Kurdistan were uneducated — high school graduation
rates were and are very high there, as the Academic
Delegation learned during our December 2014 visit. But
education was crucial to creating the revolutionary culture
in which the new institutions could thrive. It is a matter not
for children and youths alone but for adults as well, even
the elderly.
As Aldar Xelîl, a member of the council of TEV-DEM
[Movement for a Democratic Society], explained to us,
Rojava’s political project is “not just about changing the regime
but creating a mentality to bring the revolution to the
society. It’s a revolution for society.” Dorşîn Akîf, a teacher
at the academy, agreed: “Perception has to be changed,”
she told us, “because mentality is so important for our
revolution now. Education is crucial for us.”
The first issue that the revolution had to confront was
the language of instruction. For four decades under the
Assad regime, Kurdish children had had to learn Arabic
and study in Arabic. The Kurdish language was banned