Popular school

In a room with bare floors and unplastered walls, about twenty children sit in a circle. At the back, a slate covered in Arabic writing. Light filters through a glassless opening. Their gazes meet, some toward the board, others toward the camera, some elsewhere.

This photograph, taken in Zanzibar and selected by 1X.com , offers a glimpse into an informal Quranic teaching class , sometimes called "school after school." It is often a daily occurrence where children join a communal space after regular classes to pursue another form of learning.

A learning scene, without artifice

Here, there are no desks, no furniture, no stacked textbooks. Knowledge circulates through voice, memory, listening, repetition . The painting is worn. The silence seems porous. And yet, everything is there: concentration, belonging, transmission.

The photograph captures this moment without interfering. It does not distract from the subject: the children remain at the center, in all their direct, curious, or reserved presence.

A school in between

These informal Quranic schools are educational pillars in many parts of Tanzania , notably in Zanzibar where Islam and community education have intersected for centuries.

They exist outside institutional frameworks , and often in undedicated places – abandoned houses, open buildings, residential courtyards.

This image bears witness both to the flexibility of popular education and to the power of a minimal space invested with collective meaning.