How many schools have we built in Iraq, and how many do they need?

[Beelzebud]

I ask this question, because for 3 years, I keep hearing about all these schools we're bulding in Iraq. Does every Iraqi child get his or her own school?

Seriously though. Everytime these Bushists start talking about the "good" things in Iraq, "We're building schools!" is always at the top of the list. From the same people that want to abolish the Department of Education, and public schools, no less... So have any of you ever seen any statistic for how many schools we've built, how many are actually operational? Because for three years I've heard nothing but good news about schools being built. You'd think at some point they would have enough, and we could start working on getting our troops home.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. we rebuild them...

then we either take them over and use them as operation bases or we bomb them to rubble again.

the never-ending circle of terror.

[sabra]

2. Actually that is one of the "positives" coming out of the war...

as Iraq was one of the worst when it came to illiteracy. However, security tops everything, so you can build a glorious school, but if no one can get to it (because of the chaos), you've got a problem...

[Bridget Burke]

6. What's a good source for pre-war literacy in Iraq?

I've been looking.

[BlooInBloo]

8. Here's one I found...

http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/education.htm

Not awful, not great.

Doesn't look like the number of schools was the problem tho - practically all Iraqi kids attended school.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. Yes, interesting that the UN sees the decline coming after the last

15 or 20 years...

"The results of education reform in the 1970s and 1980s are evident in the high literacy rates in the adult population. However, over the past two decades, wars, sanctions, and harsh economic conditions have taken a toll on the educational system."

[wakeme2008]

7. And it is hard to run a school on 3-4 hours of electric power

per day.

[BlooInBloo]

3. Last time I heard anything that resembled the truth...

(a) they had more-or-less plenty of schools before the war started (plz don't confuse this statement with me saying the kids were being taught the right things - sigh, poor lil tots)

(b) the schools we're building are largely schools we ourselves destroyed

[soothsayer]

4. Well, how many did we bomb?

[fryguy]

5. how many could we have built in the US for the price of the war?

rather then just relying on testing to educate the youth here?

[SOS]

9. Yet we've never seen a picture

The only Iraq school photo I've ever seen was a half-assed, unusable building "renovated" by Bechtel featured in the NY Times.
Sloppy paint, no chairs, no desks, no teachers and a backyard filled with mountains of trash.
No child had ever attended a class there.
Yet surely it's on Bush's list of "new schools".
One day I spent about a half hour googling, trying to find a photo of even one new school in Iraq. No luck.
You'd think that if these schools actually existed they would release some photos.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. CBS evening news had a graphic the other night with 185 schools

and 13 hospitals being built since 2003. I thought, "well isn't that great for $300 billion dollars and 100,000 lives that they have 13 hospitals for a population in excess of 25 million."

[cantstandbush]

12. How many schoools did we destroy with our bombs is a better question. n/

[oblivious]

13. Now many schools could Iraqis have built with their 16 billion...

The UN decided to give to the US?