Within days of the death of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, students at the Salam Hidli al-Mehan al-Chamila technical high school in Tripoli had their revolutionary handicrafts out on display, for sale.

Amps boomed out post-Gadhafi tunes across the school's courtyard as students waved the newly-adopted Libyan flag or brandished posters celebrating their delivery from tyranny.

The walls of the courtyard were covered in portraits of revolution martyrs. Long tables along the perimeter were loaded with handmade goods – hats, copybooks, cake, posters, purses – all, in some way or other, sporting the colors of Free Libya – green, black and red.

"I was selling a necklace and bags and pictures to take the money and give it to the poor people whose houses are broken from Gadhafi," says 17-year-old Epthal Abu Bakker, a student at the school.

Changing minds

Since the toppling and ultimate death of Gadhafi, change is the watchword in Libya. A new prime minister has been named, a new government is imminent, new portraits – of fallen martyrs – replace those of Gadhafi in public spaces. But perhaps one of the most crucial changes is happening in more discreet locations – in schools, all across the country.

Over his more than four decades of dictatorship, Gadhafi used the country's schools to get his ideology into the minds of his citizens. Now, the National Transitional Council has the mammoth task of purging all subjects, from primary to university level, of the dictator's influence.

Epthal's major at this school is fashion design but it was through her other subjects that she really got to know Gadhafi – history, geography and Al-Mujtama al-Jamahiri, a subject entirely dedicated to the study of Gadhafi's core treatise on politics and civic life – the "Green Book."

"We were obliged to read it," she says. "Every year, you read the same book about Moammar. They always talk about Moammar Gadhafi. He is the leader, he is the everything in the world, like he is a god, you know? Now we are free, we can say anything we want."

Purging the dictator

While Epthal and her school friends are embracing that freedom with their needles and thread, Libya's transitional Ministry of Education has quite a bit of refashioning of its own to do.

"We don't want anything that signifies him," says Mohammed Sawi, director of the Tripoli-based National Curriculum Reform Office. "Neither his name, his family, nor his symbols and signature green color."

Sawi heads a newly-formed team of 160 experts charged with rewriting educational curricula throughout Libya's entire public schooling system. First, subjects like the one dedicated to the study of the Green Book have been cancelled. Schools all over the country have already burned stockpiles of the Green Book and only a few remaining copies of it lie among the piles of obsolete school textbooks that line the corridors of the Curriculum Reform offices.

The next stage in the reform process involves superficial, symbolic changes, like removing the word "Jamahiri," a term invented by Gadhafi to describe his special notion of a republic, as well as his regime logo, and passages referring to him from school texts.

"The cover of the book, we changed it from 'Jamahiri,' to just 'Libya,' " says Amal Taher, an English expert working in the department charged with reforming all English language curricula. Along the corridor on her floor of the building are other subject departments. Depending on the subject, more severe cuts and changes are required. In geography, for example, maps were used in the old curriculum to confuse people rather than inform them.

Keeping subjects apart

"Gadhafi was afraid they could revolt at any time, so it was important that they feel far from each other," says geographer Mahmoud al-Chawadi, who is involved in reforming geography syllabi. "So, in the maps, he created a big separation between east and west Libya to disorient people and make sure they felt divided, not united."

By January 14, the new set of curricula and text books, which are provisional until Libya elects a new government next summer, will be rolled out to the country's estimated one million students. Classes will continue until then, mainly for the purpose of catching up on lessons lost due to the war this year.

However, the larger goal – removing the false ideas and mentalities cultivated through more than four decades of Gadhafi indoctrination – may take quite a long time.

"I think a lot about the future of the students and the children of this country," says Brahim al-Hajaji, principal at Epthal's school. "The big challenge is the little kids who love Gadhafi and don't know why they love him."

It was such children that threatened and beat up Epthal whenever she used to criticize Gadhafi at school. Once, when she chastised girls for hanging a poster they had made praising the dictator, they dragged her by her clothes into a dark room and beat her, she says.

"They told me, 'Who are you to talk about the leader. You are nothing. You are only a bug in our eyes,' " she recalls.

New songs

Now the power has changed, and Epthal is free to express her opinions without danger.

On recess at the Al-Hadhba al-Markazya al-Khadra primary school, a few kilometers away from Epthal's high school, children play football and sing in the schoolyard.

At first glance, it seems like any other school recess - except there are revolutionary t-shirts and wristbands and they are singing the new national anthem, purged of references to the ancient regime.

With the dictator toppled, Libya's future is uncertain – arms are awash from the war and the revolutionary political sphere is splintering. But in the country's schools, the horizon is relatively bright, assuming the country's political journey continues smoothly.

"We have to know, the children have to know what they missed before," says Epthal Abu Bakker. "We have to learn about our grandparents' time and we have to understand how Gadhafi came to power and, why he did what he did."

Author: Don Duncan
Editor: Ben Knight