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Syrian School

  • 07-07-2011 2:22am
    #1
    Buceph
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,059 ✭✭✭


    I'm in the middle of watching the first episode in this BBC4 documentary series, Syrian School. It's following kids going to two different schools in Damascus (I think they introduce a further two schools in the next episode.) They seem to be focusing mostly on a girls school for girls aged 15 to 18, and mostly Muslim. They also follow a boys school for boys aged 12 to 15, and are concentrating on a Christian Iraqi teenager who came to Syria with his family to escape the troubles in Iraq.

    It's got quite a few themes running through it. Obviously religion is at the centre of the show, but in an indirect way. They generally concentrate on the worries of schoolgoing kids, of which religion is a part of that. The girls school part highlighted quite a strange thing. The girls seem to be getting more religious compared to their teachers. There are far more of them wearing the hijab than the women in their thirties and forties. One example is the school's principal, someone who you could use the word "thundering" to describe. She doesn't betray too much of her politics, she could very well be a fervent Ba'ath supporter or she could be quite a subversive figure. But mainly she comes across as amazingly supportive of empowering the girls to be strong in the face of what I would imagine is the very traditional Islamic repression of women. The show also follows a girl running for the Head Girl position, strongly allied to the Ba'ath party, and mentored by what looks to be a political supervisor in the school. And a girl coming from a Sharia relgious school to this secular school.

    They focus less on the boys school, but where they follow the Iraqi refugee it gets absolutely heartbreaking at points. The most striking thing is when there's a festival on, and it shows him jumping and cowering at the sounds of fireworks as it instinctively reminds him of explosions in Bagdhad. His eldest brother was shot down in cold blood in Iraq. And his now eldest brother is emmigrating to Sweden. A nice section was showing him playing a game on his PC. I didn't recognise the game, but it was a third person military action game. He was as enraptured and as blank faced as any kid is while playing it, and answering questions about why he's happy to play games where he kills people in war even though he was part of a real war. "When people die in war they don't come back..."

    It was a really good show. I'd highly recommend tracking it down if you can find it.


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