King Faisal College: An educational initiative in Baghdad, terminated in 1948

Abstract

Analysis is made of the circumstances that could have led to the demise of a unique Iraqi Government educational initiative in the 1940s established in Baghdad of an elite secondary school with the name of King Faisal College. It was intended to provide special educational programmes while catering exclusively to gifted high school boy students chosen from all over the country. The analysis serves to show an abject example of how an educational project planned to serve the long-term national interests could be irreversibly damaged by petty political squabbles among its young students. It shows how political, religious and sectarian juvenal dogma could have been nurtured also by external interests targeting young students who were largely destined otherwise to have a very bright future.