Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company The Boston
Globe
December 2, 2001, Sunday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A22
LENGTH: 1114 words
HEADLINE:
FIGHTING TERROR / AIDING THE PEOPLE EDUCATION; DAUNTING TASKS AWAIT
AFGHAN SCHOOLS
BYLINE: By Lynda Gorov, and
Patrick Healy, Globe Staff
BODY: KABUL, Afghanistan - As millions of dollars pour into Afghanistan to
help return girls and boys to the classroom, officials, educators, and relief
workers concede that they have no idea how to rebuild the school system.
Today, that system is in shambles. Many of the newer
schools have been bombed beyond repair in more than two decades of shelling.
Teachers are undertrained, if they're available at all. Chairs, desks,
textbooks, and other supplies are too expensive for most communities or parents.
With attention focused on Afghan
schools, and donations likely to follow, money may not be an issue much longer.
But the lack of expertise and infrastructure is so critical that those charged
with bringing children into the classroom say it may be impossible to create a
good system.
"For 20 years there was war and drought;
there was no real school system here," said Reiko Nishijima, resident project
officer at the UNICEF office in Kabul. "Now we have to start from scratch."
UNICEF is one of the many nongovernmental organizations in
the capital seeking to create a stable network of schools for both girls and
boys. Like the others, it helped to fund underground education for girls and
schools for boys during the reign of the Taliban from 1996 until last month. But
few have experience in formal curriculum planning or ensuring cohesive
classrooms.
Even the country's interim education
minister, Mohammad Elias Zara, seemed confounded by the scope of the task ahead.
Sitting in the unheated, dingy building that houses the education department,
Zara said that almost 27,000 teachers are needed for about 8 million students.
He could not say where those teachers would come from, or how much it would cost
to train and hire them. Teachers make about $50 a month after a year of
training.
"All the world should help us," said Zara, a
former elementary school teacher who was education minister the last time the
Northern Alliance was in control.
He said that Afghan
schools would be up and running within two years. Yet no one among
nongovernmental organizations, still deeply involved in a lengthy assessment
process, would offer a time frame, saying the amount of work to be done is
staggering.
Because many schools have operated
underground since 1996, government and other officials have no real idea of what
kind of education Afghan children have been receiving.
In a recent visit to a UNICEF-run school, two dozen girls ages 7 to 15
took turns at problem-solving. Shoes off, shawls on, they rose from the floor
one after another and walked to the blackboard. The room was chilly, the space
was cramped.
After having met in secret for years under
Taliban rule, the girls were happy they no longer had to hide their education -
or worry what would happen to them if someone knew about the classes that
convened each day in a spare room.
But their spirits
did not mask an essential problem: the teaching they were getting met only the
lowest standards. Systemwide, any rebuilding effort would have to start with the
basics of education.
It is for that
reason that international educators who have swept into Kabul since the
capital fell from the Taliban fear that, despite their best efforts, the system
can not realistically strive to be first-class, at least not anytime soon.
"Everything needs assessing," said Richard J. Ragland,
regional technical advisor for the United Nations Center for Human Settlements,
or Habitat. "Everyone thinks we have to start this effort but where do you
begin?
"There was a UN joint agency meeting on
education this week, and they were saying, 'Let's get kids back to school right
away,' " he added. "People thought, 'That's a great idea, but where?' "
At Habitat's Kabul offices, the staff overseeing education
has barely begun to return from self-imposed exile. To underscore the difficulty
of getting back on track, Ragland told the story of a woman named Fatima, a
community liaison worker who oversaw several underground kindergartens and
girls' schools during the Taliban era, before she, like many other teachers,
took her education campaign to safer ground in Pakistan. Until she returns to
Afghanistan, her extensive knowledge of her local schools goes untapped.
Even now, quickly creating an education system that
probably will need thousands of female teachers requires a significant cultural
shift, one that may take more than a generation to achieve.
That, in turn, could have enormous ramifications for a country
desperate for nation-building, but also missing many of its best minds. Teachers
- like doctors, engineers and other middle-class professionals - have fled
Afghanistan in droves in recent years.
Zara the interim
education minister's four daughters, teachers all, are working in classrooms in
Pakistan. He said he hopes Afghanistan will soon have an education system
enticing enough to get them to return.
"We have to see
a transition from home-based to traditional schools, but we don't know how yet,"
said UNICEF's Nishijima. "Two things are clear: Students have to continue their
education, and we have to help the government establish a public school
system."
Historically, education has been free in
Afghanistan. But according to United Nations figures issued at a press briefing
in Kabul, in recent years not even boys have been widely educated; only 32
percent have had any sort of elementary school education, according to the
report, and even fewer completed their basic education at the
underground schools.
UNICEF alone helped educate 15,000
or so students; Habitat, with operations in four major cities and two towns,
provided instruction for thousands more.
In the
makeshift math classroom north of Kabul, the girls practiced addition on a
3-foot-high door that served as a blackboard. They used small pieces of green
chalk and a pin cushion as an eraser. From the back of the room, a teacher named
Sima dictated the lessons from a pink booklet, tut-tutting when a pupil erred.
Some of the girls clicked their tongues mockingly too; the older ones appeared a
bit bored, whispering the calculations to themselves as their younger classmates
struggled at the chalkboard.
Sima recalled the "scary"
times of teaching the girls secretly when the Taliban forbade such lessons.
"We were all afraid then," Sima said through a
translator.
Asked what they liked best about school,
the students were initially timid, not unlike American youngsters who turn quiet
when strange adults pose questions. But then they began piping up, several in
unison.
"The best thing we like about coming to school
is freedom," several shouted, almost at once. "We like to be free."
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