Libyan schools to teach anti-Gaddafi revolt

Libya's 1.2 million schoolchildren returned to classrooms nationwide yesterday, to learn a revamped curriculum that includes the revolution that ousted Moamer Gaddafi and purges his personal teachings.
The country's old textbooks have been revised to eliminate chapters that "glorified" Gaddafi with new material added on the nine-month conflict that led to his downfall and death, Education Minister Suleyman Ali al-Saheli told AFP.
"We will not repeat the same mistakes. Our children will study the entire conflict, including details of Gaddafi's death," Saheli said on the sidelines of an event marking the start of the national school year.
"For sure they will study what happened in Libya last year."
The bloody rebellion which erupted last February saw tens of thousands of Libyan men, backed by Nato forces, take up arms against Gaddafi, who was killed on October 20 following a conflict that left thousands of people dead.
Saheli said that during his four-decade regime, Gaddafi "distorted history" to cast himself in a favourable light.
"Libyan history was changed under him. Libya's genuine history was never taught," he told a gathering in the Ali Shams school in Tripoli's once-notorious Abu Salim neighbourhood.
Abu Salim was a former Gaddafi bastion that included an infamous prison where some political activists who opposed Gaddafi were held.
Large swathes of the neighbourhood were reduced to rubble when Gaddafi diehards battled former rebels in August, in the days before Tripoli fell.
"Gaddafi's political teachings, military teachings and the subject of Al-Jamahiriya are being dropped from the new curriculum," Saheli told the gathering of children, teachers and officials from the United Nations children's fund, Unicef.