The education system of Afghanistan
is becoming a little better but there are still many issues in which the
article I choose addresses. It outlines each issue starting with Cultural and
economic obstacles, shortage of classrooms and books and recruiting qualified
teachers. First off, I’d like to mention the literacy rates among Afghanistan
for males it is 43 % and for females it is only 12.6 % there is a big gender
gap in education. Some issues mentioned
at the beginning of the article is that attendance rates are down and this has
to do with culture because many girls are engaged at a young ages in the rural
areas, after married they stop attending. A lot of people are worried about
safety and security and stop attending.
Also many children aren’t attending because they are working because
poverty is a big problem among the Afghan area. The classrooms are segregated by the ninth
grade and the problem is that there are not many female teachers which they
need to teach the females. The schools have such conservative beliefs that the
girls must wear a double-headscarf. A
quote that I found particularly interesting was this, "In more than 166
districts of Afghanistan out of 416, we don't have a single female
teacher," he says. In about 200 districts, Nang adds, there is no
secondary education for girls.” (NPR).
It is said that somewhere around 1 million Afghans get to grades 11 and
12. Other issues is classrooms there is
not enough classrooms and some kids are having to be taught in tents which
cause problems because the loud outside noise is distracting to the child.
Even though many new schools have
been constructed since the Taliban, it is still not enough. Some schools are shut down because of
security reasons and others just do not send their children to school. Books is
another issue even if all the children attend there still isn’t enough books to
go around and even if there was often times children can’t read. Many say this
is because the parents are illiterate and cannot give their children the early
education they need. The last issue is
finding qualified teachers, many of the teachers did not finish the 12th
grade and many don’t even have an equivalent of an associate’s degree. The
qualified teachers also do not want to teach in the rural areas because of
distance and security issues. In the
article, it mentions only 300,000 people graduate a year and there are only
60,000 openings within the colleges/vocational and teacher training. People still have the want for education
there is just a lot of issues in Afghan that need to be tackled before they can
give them a proper education.
It is relevant that Afghanistan has created an
endless circle because being poor and illiterate keeps many out of school, if
the parents do not allow the children attend schools, the children will be in
the same position. Also, the cultural obstacles within their society believes
in women not working and with it being a patriarchal society they do not
necessarily care for women to get an education and want women to marry. This is
causing a lot of them to drop out of school. The rate of female teachers is low
and if they need more female teachers, they will have to let go of some of
these cultural beliefs and allow the girls to finish their education regardless
of the gender. Also their needs to be higher education for women if they want
their societies to become educated. The problem is they want to keep the women
uneducated and to stay in their roles as a wife and mother. The ministry of education/ government needs
to raise or contribute more money to schools in rural areas also need to
provide more books to these children. Another issue is not being educated
earlier for children, the article said they often cannot understand the texts
because of the words the children need early childhood education to build their
understanding of language up. More
schools need to be provided for education beyond high school, the competition
for places in colleges is leaving many who want to attend college out and they
would have more people to teach the children if the colleges/vocational
training allowed Name: Sarah Vestrat
Date: 10/31/2013
Time: 11:19 PM
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/10/24/240482395/are-afghanistans-schools-doing-as-well-as-touted
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