In this essay, the author explores the nationalization and secularization of the Iraqi educational system during the period between the two world wars, while demonstrating how various intellectuals championed pluralist educational models. Iraqi social and intellectual history has focused on education as an important prism reflecting approaches to discipline and power and emphasized the role of educators as agents of socialization and Arab nationalism. These studies, however, neglected educational theorists who were part of the opposition and relied on essays, textbooks, and plans produced by the Ministry of Education. Therefore, the author examines new sources on Iraqi education--such as newspaper articles, novels, and short stories--to document the opposition to many plans proposed by the Ministry of Education and the unsuccessful implementation of these plans. Such accounts illustrate the resistance to the state's disciplinary power and point to the hybrid nature of Iraqi education in which the modern and the premodern intertwined. (Contains 75 footnotes.)