of you are well aware). It was fun to get a snow day and spend a long weekend at home. We ended up with around 16-18" of new snow and while we weren't able to get out and enjoy it as we should, we still had a good weekend. The photos on the right are "during" and "after" pics. The trailer provides a pretty good reference point.
Town home life deprives us of the benefits of shoveling, so we spent the weekend digging out our office area. As I was going through some grad school stuff from last semester, I came across a fact sheet produced by the Basic Educational Coalition. The data below is from 2004, but is still staggering. I'd be willing to bet most of the demographic data hasn't changed. I'd also bet that while progress was being made on infrastructure improvements, it has either been stalled or even regressed at this point.
In Iraq Today
- 40% of the country’s 24.5 million people are under the age of 14.1
- 44% of men and 75% of women are illiterate.
- 31% of girls and 17.5% of boys do not attend primary school.3 In rural regions, 50% of girls are estimated to be out of school.
- Those who do go to school leave early: 40–50% of children drop out between Grades 1 and 6, and 30–40% drop out between Grades 7 and 9.5
- 80% of the 13,000 primary and secondary schools in Iraq require significant reconstruction due to structural damage and deterioration.
- Some 3,000 schools were looted following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
- Security concerns continue to keep children from school. Kidnappings have increased, making travel to and from school hazardous, while bombs and unexploded ordnance have killed students in school yards.
- In most primary schools, the school day has been divided into two—and sometimes three—shifts due to a lack of teachers, resources, and facilities.11 In 2000, the Iraqi Ministry of Education estimated that more than 6,000 new schools would need to be built to eliminate double shifts.
http://www.basiced.org/images/iraq.pdf
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