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Iraq Peace Team to Deliver Letters from American Students to Iraqi Students
Baghdad - Educators from the United States, on a delegation with Voices in the Wilderness, will visit the Al-Markaziya Secondary School for Boys on Wednesday, September 25th at 10am to deliver pen pal letters from American students, and discuss how economic sanctions and threat of war have affected their education.
Barbara Lubin, Former School Board President of Berkeley public schools and Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, stated that "the future of any country is its children. All children need to feel safe, secure and are entitled to a good education, not being frightened by air raids. As American educators and citizens, we believe in teaching peace, not teaching war. American children are reaching out to Iraqi children, and those are important connections to make."
Children in Iraq aged twelve years or younger have known no other experience than sanctions and war. And children in the United States know nothing about their experience due to the lack of cross-cultural communication. Currently no pen pal or study abroad programs exist between Iraq and the rest of the world, leaving a huge gap in what each group knows about the other. Delegation members will deliver letters from students in the United States, and offer the hope for peace and reconciliation sent by teenagers studying nonviolence.
Leah Wells, Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and nonviolence teacher in high schools in California reports, "The change in my students, after being taught a peace curriculum is remarkable. My students open up to the experience of others in the world and begin to think critically about the origin of problems like sanctions, and more importantly they get a human face for the Iraqi students that is not reported on the evening news. Teaching peace is the most important thing in our world."
Concerned by the damaging effects of sanctions on the state of education in Iraq, the group wants to learn firsthand about school conditions and the learning environment by speaking with teachers and students. They will report their findings and experiences during their involvement with the Iraq Peace Team (www.iraqpeaceteam.org) and upon their return to the US.
Educators traveling with Voices in the Wilderness are Barbara Lubin (CA), David Smith-Ferri (CA), Bill Quigley (LA), Daniel Muller (IL) and Leah Wells (CA).
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