{"id":110462,"date":"2026-05-12T16:41:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/110462\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T16:41:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:41:24","slug":"israels-war-creating-a-lost-generation-of-lebanese-students-israel-attacks-lebanon-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/110462\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s war creating a \u2018lost generation\u2019 of Lebanese students | Israel attacks Lebanon News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beirut, Lebanon \u2013 Israel\u2019s war<\/a> has created a lost generation of Lebanese students, widening societal disparities and, in turn, damaging national unity, experts have told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Israel has destroyed schools across southern Lebanon and displaced hundreds of thousands of students. Hundreds of educational institutions have turned into makeshift shelters for thousands of displaced people<\/a>, causing a compounding series of disruptions to an education system that was already struggling as a result of a debilitating economic crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Schools in Lebanon have responded by using online learning and other programs to reach students, but education experts in the country said many were still falling through the gaps. And in an effort to catch up on all the lost schooling, the focus has been on subjects such as the sciences and mathematics, with topics such as citizenship ignored.<\/p>\n

In a country like Lebanon, with its numerous religious sects, that could lead to a dangerous future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mission of an education system is to build citizens,\u201d Carlos Naffah, an academic researcher, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to face the fact that we lost a generation,\u201d said Naffah.<\/p>\n

Stop-gap solutions<\/p>\n

On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon for the second time in under two years. It came on the back of Hezbollah\u2019s first response to months of unanswered Israeli attacks on Lebanon, including more than 10,000 violations of the November 2024 ceasefire between the two sides.<\/p>\n

Since March, Israeli attacks have displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon, among them 500,000 school-aged children, according to UNESCO. Not only are hundreds of thousands of students displaced, but many of the schools they learned in are no longer accessible.<\/p>\n

According to UNESCO, 339 schools are located in warzones in Lebanon, while hundreds more are now acting as collective shelters to the displaced, affecting access to education for another 250,000 children. Another 100 schools are in high-risk areas, meaning they could soon become inaccessible to students.<\/p>\n

With so many students out of school, some learning institutions have turned to online learning. But education experts said this had its drawbacks, particularly for students from lower-income families, and that a series of compounding crises has meant that every year of schooling since 2019 has been interrupted for one reason or another.<\/p>\n

\u201cHybrid learning has become the de facto norm in Lebanon over the past several years due to continuous instability, from the October 2019 revolution<\/a> to COVID-19, the economic crisis, and now the ongoing war,\u201d Tala Abdulghani, a senior researcher at the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, told Al Jazeera. \u201cHowever, it has often proven ineffective, particularly for vulnerable students, due to limited internet access, electricity shortages, lack of devices, and unstable living conditions, leaving many children unable to consistently access education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other solutions have also been put forward by the Ministry of Higher Education, in coordination with UNESCO, including opening multiple shifts to public schools and setting up temporary learning centres. They have also worked on integrating psychosocial and mental health services for students.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren are losing routine, stability, friendships and normal life,\u201d Maysoun Chehab, senior education programme specialist at UNESCO, told Al Jazeera. \u201cMany are carrying trauma, anxiety, fear, uncertainty over repeated displacement, exposure to violence, being around violence and listening to the news, and prolonged instability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Increasing inequalities<\/p>\n

Experts said the Ministry of Education and other NGOs are providing support to students where they can, but Lebanon\u2019s economic crisis and a global reduction in humanitarian support have made it more difficult for families to find solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoverty has dramatically increased, placing additional pressure on families already struggling to survive,\u201d Chehab said. \u201cFamilies face impossible choices between paying for transportation, food, heating or keeping kids connected to their education by the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chehab said that those choices lead to some students dropping out, which in turn increases cases of child labour and child marriage. \u201cAll this is happening when humanitarian funding is under immense strain and educational emergencies are one of the most underfunded worldwide,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Even before the start of hostilities with Israel in October 2023, Lebanon\u2019s education system was in bad shape. The economic crisis in particular has seen an erosion of the country\u2019s once thriving middle class, with Lebanon\u2019s Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, rising from 0.32 in 2011 to 0.61 in 2023, according to the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. According to a 2024 study by ESCWA (PDF<\/a>), Lebanon was in the top 1 percent of most unequal countries in the world, and that is all before the latest Israeli attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war has had an uneven impact across the country, in which we\u2019re seeing a growing educational inequality where geography and socioeconomic status increasingly determine whether a child can access learning at all,\u201d Abdulghani said. \u201cIn the south, many students have stopped going to school entirely because of displacement, insecurity, and schools being located in active conflict zones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overlapping shocks to the system<\/p>\n

While students and school-age children are among the primary victims of the war, the education system is also being deeply affected by the pain being suffered by teachers as a result of the fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are witnessing is the emergence of a deeply unequal education where some children are continuing their education while others are experiencing prolonged interruptions, learning loss, trauma, and isolation,\u201d Abdulghani said. \u201cThis is on top of economic barriers, the collapse of infrastructure, limited access to remote learning, and the immense psychological toll the war has had on children and teachers alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lebanon\u2019s public sector teachers have fought for livable wages for years. With low salaries, many take on additional workloads, such as tutoring. Recent years have been particularly brutal on teachers as the economic crisis and currency devaluation meant their already meagre salaries decreased by about 80 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers are the backbone of any education system, and they are paying a tremendous price,\u201d Chehab said. \u201cFrom 2019 onwards, 30 percent of the sector left the country or changed professions entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those displaced by the war are many teachers, who, in addition to facing economic difficulties, are facing threats to their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cEducation systems may survive one shock, but these are overlapping shocks ongoing for years,\u201d Chehab said.<\/p>\n

Most experts believe the current minister of education, Rima Karami, is competent, but said that numerous structural factors, including the ongoing economic crisis, political corruption, and the shortage of humanitarian aid, mean that a lot more needs to be done, requiring what one researcher called \u201cout-of-the-box thinking\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fear is that without serious nationwide intervention, these disparities will have long-term consequences and leave an entire generation further behind,\u201d Abdulghani said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beirut, Lebanon \u2013 Israel\u2019s war has created a lost generation of Lebanese students, widening societal disparities and, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[948,647,37,47,93,49,42],"class_list":{"0":"post-110462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-features","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-israel-attacks-lebanon","12":"tag-lebanon","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116562604265072867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}