September Net

Since its coup on 21 September 2014, the Iran-backed Houthi militia embarked on a systematic process of destroying education in Yemen.
Yemeni educators collectively said the added sectarianism to school curricula in Houthi-run areas will work to block and remold the minds of youth. Iran-backed Houthis continue to carry out crimes against local schools in areas they run.

On that note, school sources in Sanaa, who requested anonymity, reported Houthis implementing a wide range of changes in curriculums, especially those concerning primary and elementary teaching. Some of the subjects which witnessed the most alterations were Islamic and Quranic studies.

Shockingly, Houthis have cancelled all sports and art classes and has reshaped curricula in a way designed to aid its agenda and create more cannon fodder to recruit and deploy to battlefronts. All schools in Houthi-run territory, short and simple, have been flooded with and coerced into adopting coup-styled education material.
The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) has described the Houthis’ takeover of the school education systems as a broad brainwashing scheme conducted on a large-scale with very serious long-term negative impact.

A government official explained how dangerous the Houthi move is, noting that the Houthification of schools has been moving rapidly in areas under the militia’s control.

Houthification of education is implemented through administering sectarian teachings imported from Iran. According to 2010 statistics, this allows the brainwashing of some 5 million students.

A local educator, who refused to be named for security reasons, urged the swift intervention of concerned international bodies to bring the Houthification of education to an end and restore academic integrity.

Instilling sectarianism to school curricula is bound to generate extremism, with activists pointing to the dangers of math books being flooded with death glorifying connotations Houthis are infamous for authoring.

Activists believe that Houthis are working diligently to shake and erase equality, nationality and cultural values and replace it with sectarian racism.

Apart from whitewashing its six-year history of bloodshed in Yemen, the Houthi militia is looking to recruit youth at schools through altering school curricula.

According to parents of students in Houthi-run areas, the initial phase of change mostly affected the following subjects: Arabic language, history, and Islamic studies.

Observers, for their part, described the militias’ change of curriculum as a “dangerous precedent”.

Since the Houthi coupists tightened their grip on the capital Sanaa and other Yemeni regions, they have continued to spread their sectarian ideas, hate speech and a culture of violence among Yemenis of all backgrounds, especially women and children, in an attempt to convince more people into their Iran-inspired sectarian project at the expense Yemeni security and stability.