Nuri Ja'far Ali al-Chalabi (Arabic: نوري جعفر علي الجلبي), better known as Nuri Ja'far (Arabic: نوري جعفر, romanized: Nūrī Jaʻfar; 1914 – 7 November 1991), was an Iraqi psychologist, philosopher of education, and author. He wrote more than fifty works on pedagogy, psychology, history, philosophy, thought and literature. After graduating from the Higher Teachers' House in Baghdad, he went to the United States, and received a master's degree from Ohio University in 1948 and a doctorate in philosophy from the same university in the following year. He was a student of John Dewey and majored in neuropsychology. In his late years, he moved to Libya to teach at the University of Tripoli, until his death. Although Ja'far died in 1991, controversy about his death has continued by biographers.
Early years and education
Life in Iraq Ja'far was born in Al-Qurnah, Basra vilayet. His father, a farmer, and mother, Halimah bint Muhammad Ali Chalabi, were first cousins. Ja'far, referring to his mother, stated that "she was calm, very tolerant, and read the Qur'an, and that was in the 1920s". He also had a brother, Radhi. In 1926, when an elementary school opened in Al-Qurnah, his mother urged his father to enrol him and his brother in the school. The father agreed to enrol only Nuri, not Radhi, because he believed the school would treat Nuri's hyperactivity with punishment. Nuri once stated about his enrolment as follows: My father took me to the school, and my mother gave me the Qur'an. We entered the interview with a good principal, Mr. Yassin Al-Mulla Huwaysh. My father said: " This is my son, I want to enroll him, and he is reciting the Qur'an." The principal asked me to read... I shivered unbearably so that the Qur'an fell from my hand, I picked it up, kissed it. I opened it not on the appointment, and I didn't look at it, I was shivering. I started reading the verses that I memorized amazingly.... The principal said come near me. He looked and found me holding the Qur'an upside down... He encouraged me, and enrolled me in the second grade. In school, Ja'far got interested in mathematics, the Arabic language and history. After graduating from high school, he was appointed as a teacher at Al-Qurna Primary School from 18 October 1936 to 31 October 1938. He then worked as an educational inspector from October 1942 until August 1943 in Karbala and Basra. He resigned from the Ministry of Education and was off-duty from 25 October 1943 to 10 January 1950.
Higher educations
He continued his higher education, held the baccalaureate degree and his papers and went to the capital, Baghdad, to the College of Medicine to fulfil his childhood dream, but was denied admission due to financial conditions. After seeing his tattered clothes, the dean, Harry Sinderson, asked if he would be able to spend 5 dinars on his studies once a month. Ja'far replied "Neither I nor my father saw these 5 dinars [in our life]". Sinderson rejected him from the College of Medicine, which prompted him to visit the Higher Teachers' House, where Matti Al-Aqrawi supported in his matriculation and assisted him. He graduated from the Higher Teachers' House, which later became the University of Baghdad. Even though he wanted to enter the Faculty of Medicine, and said in an interview "if I had to choose – after I got to know my specialty – I would only enter the Faculty of Education, and if I was asked to specialize, I would only specialize in education and psychology, because in fact it's part of me." After obtaining a bachelor's degree with distinction, he became a teaching assistant at the Higher Teachers' House, then went to Cairo to study at the Higher Education Institute in the 1940s. Then he was able to get a scholarship to the US in 1945 to complete his education there in master's and doctorate degrees after five years. He studied philosophy of education. John Dewey was his professor and friend and colleague in the educational field. He had personal relations with him while Dewey was retired and not his doctoral advisor, he was personally associated with him. Nuri Ja'far used to stay with him at home and discussing with him. He stayed with Dewey in his apartment in New York for a whole month, reading and memorizing his works, and at the time he was an Iraqi prominent scholarship student to the US. He received a master's degree from Ohio University in 1948, and a doctorate in philosophy from the same university in 1949.
June 1954 Iraqi parliamentary election In 1950, he returned to Iraq and was appointed as director general in the Ministry of Planning from 1959 to 1963, during which time he was researching and writing poetry. He once tried to enter the Iraqi parliament but in what is believed to be an electoral fraud of the June 1954 Iraqi parliamentary election under government of Nuri al-Said, the results of the victory of more than 11 seats for the leftist and democrats were annulled. In the opinion of Tawfiq al-Tamimi , what happened to the Nur Ja'far in the constituency of his city, al-Qurna, is a glaring example of this fraud, "when the government of Nuri al-Said destroyed the ballot boxes that were filled in the name of Dr. Nuri Jaafar, the candidate for his city al-Qurna district, with his leftist colleague Amer al-Hasak and replaced them with their candidates who were not natives of the city". However, Nuri Jaafar did not give up. He continued his protest and criticism, filled the pages with newspapers about the fraud scandal and canceling the elections until he was summoned by the then Prime Minister Arshad al-Umari, and a convulsive dialogue took place between them. Al-Tamimi expressed that Nuri Jaafar was dismissed from his teaching job after this conversation in which Al-Umari asked Jaafar to stop his criticism of the government and exposing the process of electoral fraud, but Nuri Jaafar refused and said: "I will continue to write in the newspapers, to explain the electoral tragedy of Al-Qurna. The government to do whatever it wants." He later wrote a book about this fraud and published it in 1954, Falsification facts of the parliamentary electoral.
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