Releasing the Genius Releasing the Genius Magazine - Issue 1 | Page 6

RELEASING THE GENIUS
6
TEACHING MOTHERS
TO TEACH THE WORLD
The Amarok Society And Maala’s Promise
BY TANYSS MUNRO
M
aala’s 12-year-old
daughter, Roza, had a
serious problem, and
it was a problem she
shared with a third of
the children on earth:
she was growing up illiterate.
There are lots of reasons children don’t
get an education in the developing
world. Often, girls are prohibited from
attending school as it disrupts their
prescribed role in life of being a child-
bride and obedient housewife thereafter.
Boys are frequently needed to work to
supplement their parents’ income, so
they can’t spare the time. But with Roza,
as with millions of other children, she
just couldn’t afford the school supplies,
uniform, or private tutor—all of which
were completely necessary to stay afloat
in her neighborhood’s “free” school.
Maala was a singular woman in her slum
in Bangladesh in that, when she looked
at her daughter, she didn’t see a baby-
making machine or, if lucky, a sweatshop
employee. She saw a young woman with
potential. So when an Amarok Society
school opened up in her slum, Maala was
determined to attend.
WHAT’S AN AMAROK
SOCIETY SCHOOL? IT’S
A SIMPLE CONCEPT,
AIMED AT REACHING
THE 250 MILLION
CHILDREN WORLDWIDE
THAT CONVENTIONAL
SCHOOLS DON’T REACH.
INSTEAD OF BEING A
SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN,
AMAROK SOCIETY
SCHOOLS ARE FOR
MOTHERS. natural and desirable for a girl to be
educated.
Each school teaches 25 mothers. Then,
in their own homes, each of those
mothers teaches at least five children
everything she’s learned. So essentially,
these schools spawn a bunch of micro-
schools throughout the community.
Boys can attend because the micro-
schools can be very flexible around
time constraints, and girls can attend
because each mother will have seen,
through her own experience in class
that morning, that it’s completely And then tragedy struck: a few months
ago, Maala passed away.
Maala worked hard in her class and
was a proud teacher of Roza and other
children in the neighborhood. She
made a resolution: Roza was going to
go to university.
That doesn’t seem like much of a goal
here, but back in Bangladesh, it’s a
brave statement. It’s heroic. It stares at
the bleak future that society says must
be and demands something better.
Roza was going to go to university.
Maala was going to attend her school
every day and teach her daughter every
night until her promise was met.
What happened to bright Roza? The
world seemed ready to course-correct
her back into a predictable life of
poverty and squandered potential. Her
father, no longer inspired by his late
wife’s convictions, decided it was time
to marry young Roza off. The closer a
girl gets to 18, you see, the harder she
is to find a husband for.