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The Positions of the Youth Tameem and Majed
This subject deals with the worries, problems and challenges that face a whole neglected youthful generation. As we belong to this generation, therefore, we are the best who can talk about it.The Intellectual and Political Belongings of the Youth:
The International Declaration of Human
Rights indicates in the Articles No. 18, 19 and 20 that each person has
the right of freethinking, conscience, religion, and the freedom of
expressing through education, practices and rituals. Also a person has
the right to freedom of opinion and expression, adopting ideas without
any interference or obligation to join an organization. The treaty of
Child Rights, less than 18 years old, which was certified by The talk about any political or intellectual belonging of the youth starts from the primary school. First, the children are subscribed to the Vanguards of Ba'ath, then in the preparatory school, to the Youth of Revolution Union. Both organizations are substitutes for Ba'ath Party. In the Secondary school, the youth meet a new and bigger form of organization that requires more responsibility and commitment for the future. At this early stage, the youngsters do not have enough education and consciousness to be qualified to choose a political, organizational or intellectual trend. The paradox starts when the school administration distributes, suddenly, the application forms of Ba'ath Party to the students. Each student has to fill an application to become a "supporter member" in Ba'ath, without any anticipated preparation or discussion, except those who were diligently participating the activities of YRU. The surprise would not enable the youth to take the right decision; they even might become enthusiastic to join the Party. Many conditions affect the decision, which might follow temptations and privileges or due to awareness of the rejection results. Usually, only those students who had anticipated directions, away from school, reject the subscription. According to the convention of the Progressive National Front, no Party, other than Ba'ath, is allowed to have any activity among schools. This means that the choices for the students are canceled. In the schools, the Party's meetings are rather usual classes, which are included in the teaching schedule. Most of the superintendents of the circles are schoolteachers, thus, the meeting becomes a sort of theoretical class, especially that the activity of the Party is, mostly, reading some literacy of Ba'ath and its decisions without any real understanding. Other activities, usually do not relate to the known concept of Ba'ath and, sometimes, turn to become for entertainment. The superintendents and the students do not commit to an effective organizational practice; in addition, the higher commissions of the Party do not follow them up. This indicates that the real purpose of early belonging to the Party is not for preparing the students, intellectually, to become effective members, but for other purposes. Even though the other Parties are paralyzed with complete dependency to (on) Ba'ath, one of the purposes is to limit their bases, which can not practice any activity until after the school stage. The second purpose is to cultivate the students' commitment to the decisions of the Party and Ba'athi slogans that represent the directions of the regime. After the secondary school, the student transfers to the university, which previously was the most important center of political work, to find himself in an empty atmosphere of any, supposedly, political activity. The Syrian universities are the region of absolute power of Ba'ath and its substitute organization the National Union of Syrian Students. There is a special branch of Ba'ath in the university, which sections are distributed on all the institutions. The subscription to the National Union of Students is obligatory for all students; in addition, the union dominates all the activities of the students, such as, student conferences, administrative institutions and others.
At the university, the student who has
enough conscious to choose his political and organizational belonging
can not practice his perception because he, already, has subscription to
Ba'ath. Those who did not join Ba'ath at school for any reason, like
studying outside Therefore, the only form of an organizational activity at the university is the Ba'athi meetings that have no real rules of a Party. At the meetings, the members receive the final decisions of the authority, not to discuss or vote, but just to have an idea. Although criticism and self-criticizing are the principles of Ba'ath, they remain theories to be told. The main attention becomes concentrated on the members of Ba'ath, hence those who do not, regularly, attend meetings are exposed to warnings, threatening of dismissal, security inquiries, prohibition of travel and deprivation of passports, and other pressures. In general, when the threatened is politically neutral the threatening of dismissal would not be performed. The Union of Students is responsible for all the administrative problems of the students through its yearly elected administrations. Theoretically, the union has many jurisdictions, but practically, very limited, which often can not resolve the essential problems of the students. In fact, there is no real organized activity of Ba'ath in the university. The other Parties of the front have neither influence nor credibility because they have complete constitutional dependency to Ba'ath. Except the unofficial propaganda for the Syrian Communist Party, no other Party practices any informational activity or publicity for its ideology. Often, the little affiliated numbers of students to the Parties of the front continue their functions by inheritance. The Syrian Communist Party is an example of the tradition of inheritance within its two splits, which have a, relatively, good masses' publicity in comparison with other Progressive Parties of the Front, except Ba'ath Party.
The Palestinians of 1948 and 1967, who
live in
Recently, some uncommon organizational
activities of Parties started to appear, like, the raised flag of Hezb
Allah, which spread in the streets of Other than that, there are no political organizations outside the Parties of the front because there is no place for any Party or organization or opposition's gathering. The past events, such as, the annihilation of Muslim Brotherhood movement with all the accompanied arbitrary repression that victimized both innocent and accused individuals, the elimination of labor Party and communist Party of Riad Al Turk affected the people psychologically. During that period, the Syrian security institutions developed an oppression system to deal with the Syrian public, which suppressed any organizational attempt during the following two decades. The state of horror prevailed among people, because of the security arbitrary reactions, which were not only practiced against any organizational attempt outside the margin of the regime, but also against any expressed opinion away from praising the regime. The most restraining procedures in this field are the big numbers of political dإtentes, whose fate is unknown until now. There are some civil associations that have various activities away from politics, like the Syrian-Palestinian Red Crescent, which includes a number of youth who assist in different charitable activities. Although the activities have no political connections, the volunteers face many obstacles, mostly, from the bureaucratic system, which is not familiar with the NGOs activity. The decree of 1964 appoints the President of the Republic as the honorary president of the Syrian Red Crescent, therefore, the theoretical independence of such an international organization does not exist. The rest of civil organizations are concerned with the minorities like Cherkessian Association and Armenian Association. These minorities are racial or nationalist. The Syrian Communist Party of Khaled Bakdash presents the Kurds minority. There are Christian organizations for Youth that follow Churches, like the Christian boy scout and the religious hymn orchestras, which activities are social and far from politics. Also, some Muslim youth join limited gatherings that deal with religious preaching and recitation of the Koran in the Mosques. Most of these civil organization represent an escape from Ba'ath to substitute their incapacity to join the political work. The presence of youth was not noticeable in the social and political forums that spread after the death of Assad, which were later closed by the security decisions. In most cases, the forums were restricted to intellectuals and well known political and social personalities. The forums had long theoretical discussions, complicated long interposition and non-practical conducts, without paying attention for the young people, who were not interested with that. Away from the organized belongings, the mentalities of the Syrian youth are first directed toward the left, Marx & Lenin school. Due to the scientific delegations and scholarships, since the middle of sixties till nineties, many students and their children were influenced by communism. The offered soviet books in Arabic language with cheap prices assisted the spread of these ideas. The books dealt with the soviet ideology, as well as, the soviet literature, which explained the achievements of the soviet nation from the revolution of October in 1917, 2nd World War, until building the country and transform it into an International Pole. Also, there were books about the Cuban liberation movement, which attracted many supporters who sympathized with its experience against imperialism. In addition, some utopian youth were affected by the socialist theories without a deep and clear vision. Other than beliefs with socialist theories, most of them derived ideas from socialist Ba'athi vision and reformed theirs away from it. The other trend that attracts many youth is the nationalist trend and its divisions because there is no definite clear features for one nationalistic vision. At the beginning, most youth adopt the utopias of Ba'ath about the correlation among Arab countries and the necessity for interpreting this link into a real nationalistic existence. This vision is affected by many factors, mainly, the theories of Ba'ath, nationalist or socialist, which are instructed to students at early stages in schools. The second factor is due to the theories of Ba'ath, which exclude the racial nationalist ideas and depend on more acceptable ideologies like, the unity of language, geography and history.
In addition, there is the supporters of
Nasseri experiment, who believe in Jamal Abed Al Nasser trend, being the
most national and upright leader in the modern history of Arab nation.
Although
The third nationalist trend believes that
grand natural The religious trend, the right, has two kinds. The most prevailed form is the non-politicized religious direction, either because of non-desire to politicize the religion or the inability to do so due to the repression attacks that continued against this movement over twenty years. While some religious groups seem to be enlightened and opened to society, other groups seem to be closed and rejecting.
The second direction of politicized
religion, is adherent to the The Academic Attainment: The Rights of the Child Treaty recognizes the child's right for education and invites all the member countries to facilitate the chances of education for all the children, including secondary and higher education according to equality of opportunities.
In
At the university, the students are
admitted according to their grade average, which due to the results of
the total exams changes every year. The average of grades accords with
the capacities of the universities and the number of students for each
faculty. Thus, the students compete, hardly, to gain the faculties that
demand higher grades. Although all schools are public, the competition
is affected by the kind of schools (private, public, famous, big and
small) and the cadres of teachers, who are much more
better in Before the university, the school education is recognized for the following teaching schedule: - Since the primary school, the socialist nationalist education, called "social education", is taught for students. - During the preparatory and secondary schools, the students are taught most theories of Ba'ath Party. - Islamic and Christian religious courses are taught but the related grades of the final exams are excluded from the secondary certificate total average. - At the fifth grade of primary school, English and French languages start to be taught. Students are divided to start studying English or French, randomly, without regarding their desire.
- All primary stages in 1 - Entering the University: Due to many factors, principally the economical and social ones, the students choose their studies. Therefore, most students would desire medicine or engineering because such specialization provides good income and social prestige. The contrary occurs at the other faculties of literature that the students' profession is limited to teaching, which income is low with humble social position. For social reasons, most females prefer to enroll in dentist's studies or pharmacy or interior designing. The previous factors caused big differences of demanded averages for faculties, like medicine, which is highly demanded, requires grades average of 93% at least. Other Scientific demanded faculties follow Medicine, gradually: Dentists, Pharmacy, Computer science, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Architecture, Mechanical Engineering and so on. As for the faculties of Arts and Literature, the average of grades starts from Journalism, law, Literature to other different Institutes. Having extremely hard exams, many students prefer to finish their high school in other Arab countries to obtain the certificate with higher grades in order to enroll at the faculties of the Syrian universities. These difficulties of affiliation to university create many problems for the students, mainly, joining faculties according to their families' demands, also, the social view for faculties of lower averages. 2 - The Universities' Studies:
There are four universities in All the studies at the Syrian universities are in Arabic language. All the teaching schedules and books are either translated or written by the board of professors in Arabic. Teaching all the materials in Arabic is considered an essential achievement of the Syrian universities that has its negative and positive sides. The positive point is to facilitate studies for the students who usually do not master other languages. On the other hand, one of the negative points is the weak renewal of materials to accord with the scientific development. In addition, the Arabic resources are limited to the university books. Of course, students are exhausted to conform between the various information and different languages. Also, the students who have ambitions for higher studies need to restart learning English lately.
The Syrian universities suffer from the
paradox of students' big numbers and the limited capacities to include
them. The reason of this impasse is because of the
law that afford education for all people for free without
considering the augmentation of students' numbers and the necessity to
enlarge the capacities, like buildings, tools and cadres of teachers.
The number of students who study medicine in the first year, for
example, is ten times more than the number in the Even thought the new law that permits the establishment of private universities might be limited to the rich students, who can afford the high costs of studies, it might assist a partial solution for the increasing numbers of students. Probably, This mentioned law might enable the government to cancel or restrict the decision of having the capacity for all students of the country. 3 - University Exams: The students talk a lot about the unfair exams of the university in many faculties. First, the teachers have a problem with correcting all the papers, properly and fairly, because of the huge number of students. Second, complete articles and questions of the exams are sold for some students, openly, without any suitable measures to stop that. Actually, it is almost impossible for a professor to check 4000 exam papers, each of four pages, uprightly and justly, especially, that his salary is not enough for ten days of the month, plus, no one will settle an account with him, unless in rare and exceptional cases. A part of this phenomenon was resolved by using the computer for checking some exams without the interference of the teachers. Still, some teachers choose hard and cripple questions, so that the students' average of passing the exams will never exceed 15%. Thus, the students try other bad options to pass the exams like, cheating. Besides, the students suffer from the teachers' conducts and bad treatment. Some teachers try to dominate and command the students according to their own personal, psychological, social and political considerations. 4 - After Graduation: The Syrian universities afford higher academic studies for the students in some faculties to obtain Diploma, MA degree and Ph.D. Degree. Only a limited number of students are accepted to continue their higher studies according to their averages of graduation, which differ from one specialization to another. The Ph.D. degree is restricted to some literary specialization, the scientific graduate studies require traveling abroad. The students have to either travel on their own expenses or the government's expense in return for teaching at the university for definite years. We would like to refer that most scholarships were not applied for the students who deserved that. Usually, many factors interfere with the choice of candidates, such as, political belonging, personal relationships and mediately. Some students could gain scholarships through the cultural attachإ of foreign embassies. Other than travelling and graduate studies, the practical life of the male student starts with the compulsory military service. Social Relationships: We will deal with the social relationships of the youth in the big cities, in which other than family relations, the youth have either casual or permanent relations. We will concentrate on the relationships of youth at the university. Essentially, the university relationships are related to studies, which might develop to friendships or love relations or others. Within this atmosphere, the social and economical considerations recognize the various groups. Unlike other people's gatherings, the mix of gender at the university is obvious and clear in all the social and studying activities. Even though many students come from conservative families, the innocent relationships between males and females are accepted, probably because it is difficult to control or prohibit such relations at the universities. At the same time, the patriarchal family appears with its strictness form, where the pyramidal succession of the father's authority on the top, followed by the male sons or the mother, according to the grade of stringency, thus, the daughters remain at the base. Although the western vision of family is transferred to the Syrian society through the media, the traditional system remains widely spread. In most cases, the family becomes the region of absolute father's rule without any discussion or competition. This sort of conduct and relations is reflected in the power relations, so, the females are subjugated to the control of males. With the domination of the father, the children become controlled by the fear from the patriarchal repression. Thus, they are obliged to use curled methods, like lying, to achieve their personal desires without breaking the father's restrains. The grade of control varies from more into less strict families. A group of postulates results from the patriarchal family in the Syrian society, such as, the difficulty of independence from the family, not only the females but the males too, unless they go to study abroad. The family control expands from choosing the studies of their children to their marriages. Still, the children repeat the same system of repression with their new children. The accepted patriarchal system of absolute men control allows the males to interfere with females' affairs, relations and control them. Therefore, the females, mothers and daughters, become the most oppressed members in the family and society. In spite of this sort of prevailed relationships, there are a narrow margin of exceptions among the intellectuals, who try to reflect a more developed and democratic vision, but without getting rid completely of the patriarchal conduct. Also, a part of rich families, whose conditions permitted them to see other types of western relations, like to allow more freedoms of relations inside and outside the family. This conduct is not necessarily of complete belief but a sort of prestigious civilized appearance, which is imposed by most social groups of this class. In addition, the ethnic and sectarian influences affect the patriarchal family control. As it is noticed, the relationships between males and females are less restricted among the same minority. This attitude is subjugated to preserve the particularity of the minorities. The more distinctive relations are among the two genders in the conservative Islamic society. In spite of superficial appearances, the Islamic society is very complicated and contradicted because of the unbalance between its strict conservative nature and the imitations of the western freedoms. We can say that the separation between both genders in the preparatory and secondary school represents the form of their relationships. Thus, the teenagers are faced with social and official prohibitions toward the relationships with the opposite gender, which create an urged desire to communicate, but it would be so difficult to achieve. Accordingly, there would result an emotional and sexual suppression that urges the teenager to establish any sort of emotional relation, without regarding the suitability of the partner, to fulfill the emotional and sexual needs. These relations are mostly superficial and once fulfilling the urging needs they terminate, especially, when the family rejects such relations and continuously follow the teenagers and prevent them of establishing a rational relation. The transfer into the university creates a coup of concepts between the narrow restricted atmosphere of the school and the wide-open scope of gender mixture at the university. Here, girls and boys face a new position that they have to adopt with and then to care for the available choices. Usually, the choices are more serious and clarified in the late years of studies at the university, especially that the available chances might end after graduation. Actually, most marriages are still, traditionally, arranged in the Syrian society. The girl remains waiting for an unknown man to engage her in case he fulfills the social and economical demands.
The sexual relations range from complete
rejection, according to the cultural and traditional considerations,
which is the prevailed case, to complete sexual abuse, which is less
than the western societies, with a continuos tendency to preserve the
female's virginity or claiming that. Due to the social prohibition of
sex before marriage, this sort of relation is always secretly practiced.
Thus, the sexual relation becomes a heavy load for both partners because
of fear to be discovered, the loss of virginity and the illegitimate
pregnancy. To unload the sexual suppression, the government ignores the
penalties in certain places, like deserted roads or Kasion
mountain, where a big number of cars stop by
the roads sides. Thus, the picnic to Paid sex is allowed and there are special places to practice it. Still, these places are not very much accepted because of financial costs, fears of diseases, lack of satisfaction, besides, the places are suspicious and socially rejected.
Another matter, which has different
references, is the Veil 'Hijab'. In The main problem is that the parents often impose hijab on their daughters by force, which in many cases lead to a negative reaction, a moral abuse. Thus, the reaction would penalize the parents who believe that Hijab has a moral disciplined function in a superficial way of protection. The girl, who wears Hijab against her freewill, exploits the moral and religious social view to practice her wishes. Accordingly, a woman practices the duality between the superficial and actual operation. Work and the Youth Resources of Income: Entire classes are kept away from politics and effective social activity because of the search for income's resources. The poor living conditions of most people directed their attentions toward working and earning money. As it is known, the average of income does not fulfill the essential needs for a family of three persons. Therefore, at an early age, the sons start to assist in supplying the family's income on the expense of their studies and, sometimes, they stop their academic attainment. Children employment became one of the aggravated problems. Among the prevailed general unemployment conditions, children are obliged to engage in works that do not suite their age and expose them to physical and psychological dangers. In some cases, children are led to illegal works, like contraband and other disgraceful works. Also, students might be obliged to work during the entire period of preparatory and secondary schools, which increase the number of less educated people. If they reach the university, they will feel the striking difference between their studies and the types of their work. Nowadays, it is not odd that while we find a student of law works as a night watch or an electrician, the student of electronic engineering works as a laborer or an accountant in a shop, or the student of literature works in a firm. The student wins credit of experience according to his studies by chance. Sometimes, work commitment might extend till after graduation, thus, the university degree becomes a marginal unrelated attainment. If the graduated student looks for work, according to his specialization, he has either to work in the government or in the private sector. Although the government employs the graduated students of some faculties, like engineering, the employment occurs on the expense of the real income in comparison with the demanded production. For example, the number of employed graduates might be five times more than the needed number for such a directory, in which they receive five times more incomes than the supposed payment for the fixed work. This problematic is clarified when the same directory receives more graduates than its need for the fixed limit of work, so, the increase of number does not increase the productivity but decline the quantity of the fixed work by distributing it among larger number. This happens elsewhere in the public sector, which is why many youth feel useless at work and unfairly paid. While the salaries and wages of public sector are low for daily 6 hours of work, the private sector pays a little more for 8 hours of work. The nature of the private sector's equation of supply and demand leads to lower wages with the increase of demands for work. Sometimes, the private sector's wages might be less than the public salaries, in addition, less guarantees against arbitrary expelling, oppression and bad treatment. As an example, the salary of a new graduate doctor, who has no experience, is 5000 Syrian Pounds that equal 100 American $ in a private hospital. Even though this salary is not sufficient for a medium living, the lack of chances oblige the youth to accept such wages without discussion. In spite of violating the works' rules, the solution for the youth is to work in both sectors to earn a reasonable income. Still, the joint income is not enough for saving or to support a family. The Cultural Position: It is difficult to specify the cultural position of the youth in an exact and comprehensive way. So, we will mention the impressions we had from meeting youth of different environments. We can confirm that the cultural position of the youth clarifies that we are passing through the worst period of our country's history. Probably this is because of the lack of democracy that allows the free knowledge, discussion and the freedom of opinion and expression. In addition, the bad economical condition that does not leave time for knowledge but occupying with earning living. If we try to compare between the position today and thirty years ago, we will find unimaginable big differences. Today, in spite of all the official slogans, education became limited to certain groups of people. This means that a little group uses the education as a profession and isolate from other people. Therefore, the gap between the educated and uneducated people widens because of the superior conduct of the educated group and their views for the inferior groups, who are considered ignorant. This position includes the really educated and those who claim education to take advantage of social prestige. In fact, the public would view the educated persons either as superior, far away non-understandable or as utilizing and benefiting of the prestigious status to obtain respect that they do not deserve. Some view the religious studies, as the highest of sciences and the other studies are worthless and absurd, especially that the vision of the educated person is rather connected with liberal conducts. Thus, the gap between the educated group and the other groups is widened in a conservative society like ours. The former position is accompanied with less interest of reading, as the important books are rare to find beside the high costs. Also, theaters and cinemas are not so much interesting because the actual life is less expressed and instead there are technical methods that are difficult to be understood. On the other hand, western and American movies of action, violence and sex attract the youth to discharge their suppression. According to the total position we conclude that the only solution for the youth is to escape from the tight conditions by traveling abroad to work or study within better conditions, higher incomes and keeping human dignity. Thus, the shameful circle that the Syrian society suffers for developing is completed. The youth, who represent the essential elements of development, escape from their country instead of assisting it to develop and modernize. In spite of estrangement's bitterness and the yearning for parents, the country looses its youth because once they leave it would be difficult for them to come back as long as the conditions in their country are not tempting for living.
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