The teaching of history in Iraq before the Rashid Ali coup of 1941

Abstract

The Iraqis, like the French, the Germans, and the Japanese during the interwar period, used their schools to inculcate nationalism. The curriculum was published and instituted under the British Mandate; but, despite the presence of British advisers, history classes according to the prescribed course of study emphasized Arab nationalism and Iraq's important role in a pan-Arab union. Throughout the 1920s, as independence from Britain and the treaty issue preoccupied the politicians, these were the topics discussed in the classroom, while the educators within the Ministry of Education clashed over methods and political control. In the 1930s pan-Arab issues emerged, and with the accelerated recruitment by the Iraqi Ministry of Education of Syrian and Palestinian teachers, these nationalists' concerns with independence from France and Great Britain were reflected in the Iraqi curricula, syllabi and textbooks. It was only after the British faced Iraq as an enemy rather than as an ally in May 1941 that they realized that both the army and the schools had to be overhauled, and the teaching of history took a radically new approach. Generally during the interwar period the Minister of Education in Iraq was a Shi'i political appointee. Real power in the centralized system whose authority emanated from Baghdad was wielded by the directors general and the inspectors general. From 1920 until 1941, the three men instrumental in foreign educational policy and in implanting a nationalist ideology in the schools were Muhammad Fadhil al-Jamali, Sami Shawkat and, most important, Sati' al-Husri.' Of different backgrounds and occupations, they clashed over pedagogical method, not political ideology. Jamali, a Shi'i, educated at the American University of Beirut and Teachers' College, Columbia University, and highly influenced by the work of John Dewey, the founder of American Progressive Education, worked to bring Shi'is into the Iraqi system, to introduce practical education and specialized programs for Bedouin, girls, and the disadvantaged. Here, he came into conflict with established political privilege and social elitism. Ideologically, he was eclectic, incorporating American democratic ideas, German militarism and Arab nationalism into his world view.' Sami Shawkat, a physician not a pedagogue, with little interest in Iraqi education beyond instilling the militarist spirit in the schools, is most noted for his lectures to students on the 'Profession of Death', telling them that the most important thing for them to learn was how to kill and how to die.3 He helped to institute military instruction in the schools and promoted an Iraqi Hitler Youth-type paramilitary youth organization, the Futuwwah, included German as the third language in the secondary schools, and sent student