Reality or Fantacy?
Save Queen Sheba Elementary School
Former Students and friends of Queen Sheeba Elementary School
March 27 2009
Please click here to sign the petition
It has been well known not just in this millennium but even from the ancient times that intellectual progress is one of the main means of advancing our planet in technology. And the fact that every kind of intellectual progress has its beginning and source in education cannot be questioned or argued about.
In our country, Ethiopia, either due to religious beliefs or backward cultural influences, even though not fully satisfactory, religious and secular education of teaching and learning, since before the second Italian invasion, have side by side, been taking slow, baby steps. Especially during the administrative changes of the last couple of decades, private and public schools have been given great focus and there has been a dramatic increase in the number of elementary & secondary schools, colleges, and universities.
Nevertheless, the news blowing around recently regarding Queen Sheba Elementary School is so incredible one can rightly say: “reality or fantasy?” as this would demoralize the spirit, and has become a topic among many people. There is no argument that Queen Sheba Elementary School has produced hundreds of thousands of wise and educated people in our country since the Italian occupation.
In a time when many historic and religious artifacts and icons looted by the invading enemy are being reclaimed and returned from various corners of the world to become museum pieces to be seen by tourists, and when our Obelisk has been brought back from captivity and become a source of pride and joy for our people, how is it that Queen Sheba Elementary School, this fountain of knowledge and education is seen any different from all these and has been condemned to be demolished, its students already distributed to various schools in the surrounding area, and in its place they want to build shops and stores for market expansion? This, let alone to those educated in Queen Sheba, even to those who have heard of the school from afar, has doubtless become an incredible and absurd story.
We, whose names are listed below, Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia from all corners of the world, consider what has been planned on Queen Sheba Elementary School as totally unjust, one that would destroy a national heritage, pokes and blinds the apple of the eye of education, creates despair among those who see education as the only hope, and we would like to express our opposition in the strongest terms possible. We would like the Administrative Authority of Tigray Region and Officials of Adwa and its vicinity to listen to our plea with care and concern and take immediate steps to stop this plan.
Our historic artifacts are our national identification
May Ethiopia our country advance in progress
And by the wisdom of its children advance forward!!!
Click here to read Tigringa version