Opinion | Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying - The New York Times

Mr. Abu Toha is a poet, a short story writer, an essayist and the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. This article has been updated to include news developments. Before war broke out in Gaza, I spent five years teaching English to middle schoolers there. Now I cannot imagine myself returning to teach at schools where students have spent the past year sitting and sleeping on classroom floors with their families, seeking refuge from a relentless assault. These children were not learning math or language. They were learning the names of Gazan neighborhoods as each was bombed. They were not practicing sports. They were practicing survival, carrying buckets of water for hundreds of feet and running from one classroom to another, from one school to another, from one tent to another, from one city to another, hoping not to be run over by a tank or crushed under bombed-out walls and ceilings. Across Gaza, hundreds of schools have been turned into shelters, and many of them have been at

Mr. Abu Toha is a poet, a short story writer, an essayist and the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. This article has been updated to include news developments. Before war broke out in Gaza, I spent five years teaching English to middle schoolers there. Now I cannot imagine myself returning to teach at schools where students have spent the past year sitting and sleeping on classroom floors with their families, seeking refuge from a relentless assault. These children were not learning math or language. They were learning the names of Gazan neighborhoods as each was bombed. They were no