Schools erase all Gaddafi books

Libyan schools will reopen this month, despite bombed-out facilities, scarce transport and a curriculum until recently laden with Col Muammar al-Gaddafi’s eccentric philosophies, a rebel official said.

The de facto rulers have been under increasing pressure to impose order and restore basic state services, such as education, across the war-battered North African country.

“We’ve finished erasing all Gaddafi’s items from the curriculum – the Green Book, al-Mujtama al-Jamahiri,” the rebel education chief, Soliman el-Sahli, said.

“Many items were compulsory for students and were used to sanctify Gaddafi,” he said, adding that schools were set to resume classes on 17 September.

During his four decades in power, Col Gaddafi nurtured a personality cult that pervaded Libyans’ daily lives, including their textbooks. At the top of the reading list was his Green Book, which laid out a philosophy inspired in part by socialism, Islam and Arab nationalism.

The tome is now more likely to be burned than studied.

A few months after the uprising began in February, rebels set up a committee of education experts to expunge Col Gaddafi’s theories from the curriculum, the education chief said.

More changes are planned. Under Col Gaddafi, teacherrs were often chosen more for their loyalty than their competence, and the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) wants to change that approach, Mr Sahli said.

“The people who rose under Gaddafi were unqualified. They were mainly from revolutionary committees, or they were Gaddafi’s relatives,” he said.

Schools will also be able to teach more western languages, including French and English,, Mr Sahli added.