Gaddafi Flunks Out

For more than four decades, Col. Muammar Gaddafi sought to impose his bizarre ideas on all Libyans, especially the young. School and university curricula were tailored to suit the dictator’s whims, requiring students to study his cockeyed renditions of everything from geography and history to arithmetic. Asking questions was dangerous; memorization was the order of the day. Now that the regime and its textbooks have gone to the scrapheap, the nation’s teachers are struggling to relearn their jobs in order to encourage critical and independent thought. The task won’t be easy, as old antagonisms linger and the political future remains ambiguous. The teachers say their challenge is to get students to speak up, so that all Libyan children—both those of freedom fighters and those of former Gaddafi loyalists—can help build a new country.


This past January, photographer Davide Monteleone visited schools in Tripoli and Misrata, a city that endured some of the revolution’s heaviest fighting. The images he captured reflect a nation—and an educational system—in transition. Caricatures of the ousted dictator adorn classroom walls, and the regime’s green banner has been scrapped, replaced by the new national flag of red, black, and green. At the same time, the faces of the children and their teachers show a powerful mix of hope and uncertainty. After so many years of tyranny, freedom can be confusing and scary.
 
—Kristian Jebsen