Education and Language

As citizens of Iraq, Kurds have theoretically had access to a relatively good public educational system. However, the remoteness of the areas in which they live has made the provision of such basics as schools, teachers, and supplies very difficult. In such cases, primary schools are the first priority, and there are three-year or six-year primary schools in most areas. Rural families who want their children to have more education, however, are frequently forced to send the children to live with relatives or friends of the family in areas where there is a middle or high school.

Whether or not a Kurdish child goes to school, and for how long, is very much up to the family. Even if education is compulsory, the law cannot always be enforced in rural areas, and families frequently decide that a child's time—especially a girl's—is more usefully spent at home.

The medium of education in Iraqi schools is Arabic, the national language. In northern Iraq, however, public education has been intermittently available in Kurdish, at least on the primary level, since the formation of Iraq as a country. On a higher level, the Iraqi government at one point authorized the establishment of a School for Kurdish Studies at Baghdad University, and in the early 1970s authorized the establishment of a Kurdish branch of the University of Sulemaniye. Like all privileges to the Kurds, however, these educational concessions are granted to appease Kurds when they pose a political threat and seem to be withdrawn when the Kurds cease posing the threat.

For the most part, Iraqi Kurds are educated in Arabic and as a consequence are more comfortable with written Arabic than they are with written Kurdish. The same is true by and large of Kurds in the other countries: Educated Kurds are most comfortable reading and writing their national languages. As will be explained below, this has had negative effects on the development and standardization of a single Kurdish alphabet and therefore on the development and use of written Kurdish.

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