Syrian public schools mandated rifle training and military culture for girls

Evidence

YEARS BEFORE, when she was in Syria and studying in the seventh grade, Rasha learned how to shoot a rifle. It was part of the curriculum in the public girls’ school she attended. They had mandatory classes in military history that were taught by a female officer who made them sing patriotic songs and memorize the details of Syria’s various military escapades. The regime demanded devotion—All hail Hafez, the lion of Syria—and Rasha had to comply. There she was, a thirteen-year-old girl—awkward, dislocated, going through puberty, and half a world from what she knew—loading and unloading a rifle with a bunch of other girls in a class at school. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with Fascist-era school militarization and, on the fiction side, with the militarization of childhood in Things Fall Apart’s colonial framework.
• QUESTION: Did compulsory military training in Syrian schools persist through the Assad years, and how widespread was it?
• CANDY: A seventh-grade girl in Syria learning rifle assembly as part of the standard public school curriculum is a vivid, surprising detail.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 91