SECTION: Perspective; Pg. 2F

 LENGTH: 361 words

 HEADLINE: CONSEQUENCES OF KUWAIT;
 Generation growing up in poverty

 BYLINE: Larry Kaplow, Staff Correspondent

 SOURCE: AJC

 DATELINE: Baghdad, Iraq

 BODY:
 With their sneakers, cartoon-clad backpacks and pony tails, these girls would fit in at any American school.

 But when visitors enter classes at the Hidayeh (Enlightenment) Elementary School in Baghdad, the students rise together
 with smiles and shout, ''Welcome and long live the leader, Saddam Hussein!''

 There's something else different. This school , with about 1,200 girls, has one telephone and no copying machine. Lights
 are often out in the school, and many students sit on the floors for lack of even a broken-down desk. Each year, the girls
 start their studies by erasing the penciled-in work in last year's workbooks so they can be re-used.

 Samar Khatab, a 13-year-old fifth-grader, sums up the problem, saying, ''It is because of the sanctions. The enemy
 countries want to take everything from us because we were rich.''

 Eight years after Saddam invaded Kuwait and the world slapped economic sanctions on Iraq, aid officials are worried
 about the degradation of a generation of students.

 ''This was one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East. Today it is in a state of disrepair and dilapidation that
 is having a formative effect on the youth,'' Hans von Sponeck, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, said in a recent
 interview. It is leading, he said, ''to a generation deprived of knowledge.''

 When a visitor asked children at Hidayeh Elementary who among them knew what a computer was, only a few hands
 were raised.

 In fact, these children are lucky to be in school. Enrollment from first grade through college has dropped from 56 percent in
 1990 to 42 percent today. Many children live and beg in the streets. Other children work.

 Teachers are in short supply because salaries have dropped to about $ 4 a month.

 At Hidayeh, a school in a lower-middle-class area of central Baghdad, many classes have more than 55 children. The
 students often show the lethargy expected in a country where almost a quarter of the children are undernourished.

 ''Of course, it will affect their future,'' says deputy school director Talia Ali Hussein. ''If they are suffering now, how can they
 build a society in the future?''