ISIS teaches math by asking children to count bullets

When the Islamic State took over the northern Iraqi town of Qayyara in 2014, the terrorist organization briefly allowed local schools to function as usual. But soon the militants began banning subjects they didn't like — geography, history, civics — and replacing textbooks with tomes of their own making.

The ISIS agenda was evident throughout their curriculum, which transformed schools for boys into recruiting stations. Even a subject as neutral as math was affected, with math problems asking children to imagine counting tools of war in their examples: "One bullet plus two bullets equals how many bullets?"

The good news is that Qayyara has been ISIS-free for three months, ever since the militants were driven out earlier this year as part of the U.S.-supported Iraqi troops' push toward Mosul. Now, schools are getting back to normal — though that will be a long process thanks to a too-small teaching staff and some families' decision to simply pull their children out of class for the duration of the ISIS occupation.

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"We are happy to be back at school," an 8-year-old girl named Iman told Reuters. "They wanted us to come but we didn't want to, because we don't know how to study in their language: the language of violence."