“
We can have educated men. But only when females are educated are minds changed.
— Sayed Mohammad
The student body at the Ishkashim Girls ' Higher Secondary School gather for an assembly at the end of the school day. to school. When teachers started working here and getting paid, they could help families. Other jobs started coming in government and NGO offices. Then people had hope and started sending children to school,” he said.
Arabic and Islamiat teacher Rabya Zafari said enrollment has also increased“ because the quality of education has got better. Students have notebooks and books and people like CAI are helping them to get education.”
Last year, 62 girls finished class 12 and graduated. Of those, 13 passed Kankoor, the university entrance exam, and now study at universities in Kabul and Faizabad.“ About 20 married and the rest are in teacher training in Ishkashim,” Baik said.
Bushra, 20, graduated in 2011 is now in her second year at teacher-training college in Ishkashim, although that’ s not exactly where she wanted to end up.
“ I wanted to be an astronaut. Now I want to be a teacher, I guess,” she said.“ I really don’ t know what I want to be. After teacher training, I want to continue [ education ], but I am not sure I will get opportunity. I took Kankoor two times and didn’ t pass. But it is also economic. For university, there are travel charges, food, housing.”
There is no in-school preparation for Kankoor, said Bushra and Masoona, 19, a firstyear teacher-training student.“ Most of the school textbooks, we don’ t finish them, but Kankoor test covers topics in final pages. We really need prep classes just for that,” she said.
The other obstacle for higher education is that“ girls can’ t rent house or home for staying alone because this is our culture,” Masoona said.“ I want to be a journalist. Maybe I will take Kankoor again and if I don’ t pass I will continue teacher training. I want to work.”
“ Today’ s generation is not yesterday’ s generation,” Maryam Ghamgosar, director of Voice of Afghan Women Journalists, told Afghanistan Today earlier this year.“ Today, women cannot be silenced. They demand equal rights.”
Women’ s rights are still all-too-frequently violated, even by members of their own families. Women are beaten, raped, and killed in the name of“ honor.” Forced marriage and buying and selling of girls continue.
But the new first lady, Rula Ghani, a Lebanese-born Christian, has vowed to play a more public role than her predecessor, with a focus on strengthening women’ s position,“ but without drastically upsetting Afghan society,” Radio Free Europe reported. What shape and form that will take remains to be seen.
Sayed Mohammad in Musakhil village, father of the headmaster working so hard to increase the number of girls in that school, said girls’ education must be a part of Afghanistan’ s future.
“ Without girls’ education no changes will come in village, country, and world,” he said.
“ We can have educated men. But only when females are educated are minds changed. The first step of each child passes with the mother; the mother is the first school for the child. If the mother is educated, change will come.
“ We are backward in the world. Because of lack of girls’ education we don’ t have improvement in Afghanistan. When I went to Haj, the Afghan women there didn’ t know what to do. Other Muslim women from other countries, they could read the signs and move around and knew what to do. But Afghan women were just sitting there because of lack of education. We have a big problem in this village where one thing happens wrong with one girl and nobody sends girls to education. This has to change, but it will take time,” he said. y
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