Reopening schools in conflict zones is theatre, not education
Reopening bombed-out schools amidst regional instability offers cosmetic continuity, masking systemic educational collapse across East Africa.
Reopening Mekelle’s schools amidst economic paralysis and the threat of fresh conflict is administrative theatre. Classrooms without power, materials, or psychological safety are holding pens, not institutions of learning. War obliterates foundational knowledge long before it demolishes brick and mortar. Expecting children to acquire modern skills under the shadow of renewed artillery fire is delusion dressed up as resilience. Can an educational system actually function when survival remains the curriculum?
Returning to the classroom provides vital psychosocial stability and routine for traumatised youth, even under severe austerity and lingering danger.
- ·Classrooms reopened across Tigray lack power, basic textbooks, and functional infrastructure.
- ·Protracted regional conflicts create compounding cognitive and developmental deficits for entire generations.
- ·Physical attendance without institutional security offers a performance of normalcy, not learning.