Foreign teachers view on Kurdish universities

I have worked almost two years as a university teacher in Kurdistan.
Kurds ask me how are universities in other countries. When I am in my native country Finland, people ask about the Kurdish universities.

Well. everything is totally different.

In Finland it is very difficult to get a study place. Young people work hard to get inside a university. Many teenagers study several years to succee in the entrance exam. When they start their studies, they take it seriously. Everybody makes Master's degree, with Bachelor's diploma one can not get work in Finland.

In Kurdistan it is the opposite. Young people see it as their right to go the university and get everything free of charge. Finnish students pay for everything: university fees, books, dormitory. They get a stipend from the government which covers about half of living costs. For the other half they borrow money from bank or work in the evenings. Rich parents give money to their children. But the general opinion is that parents are not responsible for children when they became 18 years old.

The Finnish students behave like adults and the Kurdish ones like children.

In Kurdish universities we start every lesson by checking from name lists which students are present. Exams must be arranged so that students can not look at each others' papers. In European universities there is no need for such control.

When I criticize Kurds I always emphasize that I do not want to blame the victim. People lack a sense of responsibility but there are reasons for that.

Sometimes when I get angry with my students I say to them that they behave like children in kindergarten.

"We did not have possibility to go to kindergarten when we were small, so we need such an experience now", one of them answered once.

I think that is the point. Teenagers, and even older generations, have grown up in war conditions. They did not get the feeling of basic security what children usually get in an early stage of their development.

Now KRG tries to compensate this lack to the student generation. But universities are not a healing system. The future of Kurdistan depends on how the new generations are educated. Is the system creative and encouraging young people to develop this country?

I visited recently Estland which got 1991 indepency when Soviet Union collapsed. In nineteen years Estonian people have created a high quality education system also according to the international standards.

I asked in an university how it was in the beginning.

"When we got independency, all people were happy and eager to develop our country. Teachers stayed in the universities until late evenings and they did not have any holidays in several years", one Estonian teacher told me.

I can not remember seing such an athmosphere even once in Kurdish universities.

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This text has been published in Asos newspapar in Sulaymania.