Here in Jordan, I live with a host family with two young children. The older one is a six-year-old boy, who is in first grade, and the younger one is only two years old and is in preschool. Both of them attend private school. When I first arrived here I was surprised to learn that they attended private school, given that in the U.S. private schools are less common. Here, however, private schools are really common. I know of at least as many private schools as public schools here in Amman.
However, public schools in Jordan are very different from the U.S. In some areas, they have as many as 60 students per class. Also, this year, the public school system is changing. Now, after sixth grade, all Jordanian public schools are separated by gender for both the students and the teachers. There are entire schools just for boys and entire schools just for girls. Until this year, this separation happened after third grade. Jordan is not a secular country like the U.S., so this division is mostly based on interpretations of Islamic religious texts. Both genders still have equal access to education though, and there are actually more women than men studying at the University of Jordan, the country’s largest university.
