Forms of Structures and Differences for Rural and Urban Syria

Two lifestyles dominate the people of Syria's everyday lives. The first of these two is the nomadic lifestyle. In this setting, live revolves around pastures and migration for resources. The people of a nomadic lifestyle usually live in a tent, one that is split into a man’s side and a woman’s side, rectangular in shape, and usually consist of a group of three generations of a family, and are called Bedouins. The second lifestyle is a sedentary lifestyle. People live in cities and villages in a sedentary lifestyle. The kind of buildings that are seen in a sedentary lifestyle depend largely on location, but most traditional houses are made of stone, an inner courtyard surrounded by rooms, and a split amongst the house into an area for animals and an area for people.

In rural Syria, the sedentary people often depend on agriculture as a means of getting by, so their houses often reflect this condition. The courtyards are not usually surrounded by rooms, and often house animals. They are usually always one story, consist of mud in most rural settings, and have very little openings. In urban houses, the structure is different. Here, the houses have many openings that lead to the inner courtyard, where as rural houses have an attached courtyard. Richer houses tend to have more rooms/floors/courtyards, and these are often able to be split into parts for guests, animals, and family.

Education in Syria differs from our own. Their system consists of six years of primary education, three years of intermediate education, and three years of secondary/technical education. Their curricula is approved by the Syrian Ministry of Education, is taught in Arabic, and focuses on general education as well as traditional culture. As part of a goal to eliminate illiteracy by 1991, the government established this three-level system in 1967, and between the years of 1970 and 1976, “primary school enrollment increased 43 percent, lower secondary enrollments increased 52 percent, and higher secondary enrollments increased 65 percent. During these years, enrollments in postsecondary institutions increased more than 66 percent” (Education). In order to accommodate these increases in education participation, the government built preparatory schools in many areas to help sedentary people, and even established mobile schools for the nomadic people. Women during the years of 1970 and 1998 saw a drastic rise in their numbers for educational statistics, some even going from numbers like 600 to 63,000 (Education). 

http://www.meda-corpus.net/libros/pdf_manuel/syria_eng/ats_eng_2.pdf
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1483/Syria-EDUCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html