On January 1, 2025, Syria’s education ministry posted an official list of amendments to the education system on Facebook. These changes would affect first to twelfth-grade schoolbooks in all Syrian schools, implementing a focus on history, religion, and science. These changes were implemented after Syria’s regime shift after the overthrow of former President Bashar al-Assad to an Islamic-led rebel group, and they would remove any content promoting or glorifying the past regime. These changes would include eliminating content supporting the former leaders, symbols, and the Baath Party, which formerly ruled from 1963. Additionally, religious and historical studies would focus on Islam, removing references to Syria’s connections with polytheistic religions.
To incorporate the changes, the ministry declared that numerous textbooks would undergo heavy editing. Texts would be deleted, rephrased, or altered along with the removal of images and illustrations from multiple textbooks. For example, phrases like “path of goodness” would be changed to “Islamic path,” and “those who have are damned and have gone astray” would be changed to “Jews and Christians.” The word “martyr” would be changed from someone who died for the homeland to someone who died for “the sake of God.” Then, chapters containing the Ottoman Empire, an old regime that controlled Syria, would be removed. Texts including philosophy would also be deleted such as “Chinese philosophical thought,” women, love, and pre-Islamic gods. The biggest change was that an entire unit on human evolution and the origins of life would be erased from science textbooks.
These changes were quick to spark national outrage, and the new government was met with backlash. Critics declared that this was an “Islamist slant to teaching,” while others perceived the changes as an attempt to erase Syria’s history. Education ministry al-Qadri defended that this decision was made to avoid “misleading information” aimed at promoting the past Assad regime and to solidify the foundations of the current Baath party. The ministry played down the changes, stating that “the curricula in all schools across Syria remain unchanged until specialized committees are formed to review and audit them.” Afterward, education minister Nazir Mohammad released a statement on the ministry’s behalf, asserting that they “only instructed the removal of content glorifying the deposed Assad regime,” and claimed that they had only replaced pictures of the Assad regime’s flag with the Syrian revolution’s flag. This did not calm public outrage, and Fadwa, a mother of two schoolchildren, expressed her disappointment over the amendments. She asserted that they could, “remove all mentions of Assad and his regime from all books, but [they] cannot erase history and obscure science.” Along with other angry parents, she enforced that this was not a political matter, but instead a concern over the future of children and the country. An example is how the new revisions change the term “Ottoman occupation” with “Ottoman rule,” which Syrian educator Youssif Ahmend points out is not “to correct a historical error, but it shows their intention to appease their Turkish allies.” Currently, parents and educators nationwide express concern over the future of their children’s education if the amendments are not reversed.
Not only have these reforms created instability and anger through citizens, but they also reflect a shift in the country’s educational priorities towards the new regime. These events demonstrate and allude to future involvement in education by the new Baath party, and the erasure of the former Assad party. Changing and rewriting the education children learn impacts the nation’s culture and removing content will erase Syria’s historical identity. Many educators and parents anxiously await to whether or not the amendments will pass.
Written by Claire Liu
