By Edgar Gutiérrez
Batoulatay, Lebanon, Sep 25 (EFE).- As children return to classrooms in southern Lebanon, the sound of school bells competes with Israeli artillery fire, while damaged schools, overcrowded classrooms and trauma from months of conflict threaten the future of thousands of students.
The laughter of children returning to school in southern Lebanon is repeatedly interrupted by the roar of Israeli artillery.
At a public school just a few hundred meters from the area occupied by Israeli forces, students aged 4 to 14 arrive wearing the traditional blue-and-white striped smocks, carrying backpacks nearly as large as themselves.
A humanitarian organization welcomes them with balloons and games to brighten the first day of the academic year.
Yet the school begins the year with broken windows, no running water and insufficient funds to repair the damage caused by months of conflict.
For security reasons, EFE was asked not to identify the school.
According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and UNICEF, 163 schools in southern Lebanon and 436 nationwide have been damaged since the Israeli offensive began on Mar. 2.
A war that never really ended For Bilal Ahmadi, who has taught chemistry and physics in nearby schools for 18 years, the conflicts of 2024 and 2026 are not separate wars but one continuous reality.
“Half of my students carry photos of martyrs. They are their brothers, their fathers or their friends,” Ahmadi said.
He described classrooms marked by constant grief, where many students have lost interest in education altogether.
‘Some no longer want to study. they want to fight.”
Economic hardship has deepened the crisis. Several of his students work after school to help support their families, leaving little time or energy for homework.
Even lessons are fragile.
“The buzz of a drone overhead is enough for students to stop listening while they try to calculate where the next strike will land,” Ahmadi says. “If shelling begins during class, there’s no way to continue.”
Overcrowded classrooms and emotional scars The shortage of teachers has pushed class sizes from 24 to 30 students, while Ahmadi’s weekly teaching load has risen from 16 to 25 hours.
Lebanese Education Minister Rima Karami has warned that around 200,000 students across the country are now at risk of educational disruption because of the war.
Veteran teacher Sanaa Farhana, who has spent 35 years at the school, says her students remain psychologically trapped in the conflict.
“We feel like we’re sitting in class, but we’re not. Our minds are occupied, our eyes are watching where the fire and smoke are coming from.”
She says some children burst into tears during lessons and ask to go home as drones continue to fly overhead almost daily.
When school becomes impossible Farhana recalled students who abandoned their education because their families could no longer afford even the modest costs of public schooling, about $100 a year in tuition and another $100 for textbooks.
One displaced student from the occupied town of Mansouri lost his best friend in the war and says he has no desire to return to school.
“I don’t like school. I don’t want to study. I just want to work with my father,” he said.
Elsewhere along the frontier, the picture is equally bleak. In Burj Qalaway, one school is being rebuilt after extensive destruction, while another public school in a neighboring village has been converted into temporary housing for displaced residents.
For Ahmadi, rebuilding classrooms is not enough.
“A student who isn’t psychologically well won’t think about anything except the negative,” he said, urging humanitarian organizations to send psychologists to schools alongside reconstruction aid. EFE
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