Houthi militias in Yemen are pressing on with their project to transform the war-torn country’s education institutions into centers that aid with the indoctrination of generations into Iran-inspired ideology.
Schools are being exploited to recruit young children, teachers, and academics and deploy them to battlefronts.
Over the last week, Houthis have staged a score of violations against the education sector in areas under their control.
The group introduced arbitrary amendments to curricula that glorify Houthi ideals. More so, a campaign of Houthi-staged arrests and kidnappings targeted students and teachers.
Education sector sources, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said that the adjustments introduced to the curricula are in line with the group's project to adapt the educational process and use it as a tool to spread ideas that are intrusive to Yemeni society.
Footage circulated on social media gave a peek into the newly-amended books which now include lessons glorifying the anniversary of the Houthi coup that took place on September 21, 2014.
The new-fangled lessons also hold the Houthi leader’s claims to the right to divine rule as fact.
The militias had previously made several amendments to the curriculum, the last of which was an amendment of the history course for the sixth grade.
In that amendment, Houthis integrated a chapter featuring a biography of the founder of the Houthi dynasty in Yemen.
Other biographies belonging to ancestors of the group’s leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, who ruled Yemen, were also introduced in the amendment.
Yemeni educators who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat warned that the amendments will produce a narrow-minded generation that is held captive by an obscurest ideology that is not compatible with modern-day life and principles of coexistence.
As for kidnappings persistently committed against students and educators, local sources in Sanaa told Asharq Al-Awsat that Houthi gunmen aboard three vehicles last week kidnapped 30 students, most of them children, in the Sanhan district.
