Syria - The Revolution

Before the revolution I was a French language teacher in a school
close to the old medieval castle in Aleppo. When the revolution
came, some of the teachers who were pro-Assad moved to areas
where regime was in control, and my old school was soon bombed.
Because I stood up against the dictator, I was wanted by the regime
and therefore had to start working in field schools. Even though
teaching now is very hard cause of the frequent bombings, it has many
advantages from how it was before.
Before the revolution, we used to see schools as military bases where
the directors behaved as generals. Horrible punishments were applied,
such as using the cane to beat students and other brutal practises that
doesn’t belong in schools at all.
Now, in the schools in the liberated areas, we have at last get rid of
these punishments. They are totally forbidden and it makes me happy
and proud every day.
One more important thing that makes me feel proud of my field
schools is that all the pictures of al-Assads family and their military
commanders are ripped out from the books. Curriculum is filtered and
modified to not to have anything about al-Assad family or his regime.
Before, it was like being in a prison to have to teach the students about
the greatness of the dictator every day in class.
Now I feel free, as teachers and students should feel.
To understand the brutality of the regime, we have to see the pattern
of how al-Assad reacts to people who try to disobey him. When the
regime loses a town or the people in a city dare to stand against Bashar
al-Assad, the regime try to destroy everything that could grow strong
and free in that area. Aleppo is a clear example of this. The regime is
using barrel bombs to kill civilians each and every day. In the hunt
for the regime to cause the biggest loss of civilians, they tend to
target marketplaces, homes and medical facilities. And of course, the
schools.
Many are the students and children who have been killed in their classrooms,
or on their way to or from school. One of the worst massacre
against the kids was in Ein Jaloot. That day, kids were having an exhibition.
By the help of their teachers, they had prepared an exhibition to
show the current situation through paintings to encourage their talent.
Some kids were really talented and some paintings were really good.
Kids were happy preparing for that exhibition. But as by given commando,
two aircrafts bombarded the schoolyard using missiles. The
first one fell close to the school, while the second one was a direct hit.
Targeting the school was very clear. They targeted kids on the day of
the exhibition where they were showing drawings about the massacres
committed by this regime. Sadly, more than 40 kids were killed that
day, in addition to 2 teachers: Bahsar and Nasr. Now those kids and
the teachers are in a higher place, they went from being in classrooms
to being in Heaven. I have to think like this to manage to go on.
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