T he N
ew E
T he Fa i
at i ra of War & Occup
on
lure of Education in
AFGHANISTAN By Nita Palmer
October 7th 2015 marks fourteen years since the United States invaded Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost in the longest war in US and Canadian history. From the beginning the war has been mired in controversy - from torture to corruption to bombing and shooting of unarmed civilians, many have questioned how much good foreign forces are doing in Afghanistan. But through all of this, the education of young Afghans has remained one of the so-called ‘bright spots’ in the controversial war. Even during the worst fighting, promising reports came of new schools built, accompanied by pictures of soldiers standing alongside Afghan children, smiling proudly in front of their new school. Afghan Education: Myth vs. Reality The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) claims that the number of students attending school in Afghanistan has increased from 900,000 in 2002 to 8 million today, including 2.5 million girls. Certainly these figures sound promising - except that they are completely inaccurate. An investigation by BuzzFeed news earlier this year spot checked USAID-funded schools in Afghanistan, and found that one in ten of the schools were “closed, not operating, or were never built in the first place”. And at the schools that were still operating, they found “far fewer students than were officially recorded as enrolled... Girls, whom the US particularly wanted to draw into formal schooling, were overcounted in official records by about 40%”. In parts of Afghanistan where military operation against the Taliban has been the
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most intense, BuzzFeed News found that the number of schools not functioning was even higher: “In Kandahar province... a full third of the 423 schools the Ministry of Education publicly reported as open in 2011 were not functioning, and in Helmand, it was more than half.” In Zabul, as many as three quarters of the schools were not functioning. US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko has also noted that “the [Afghan Ministry of Education] counts absent students as ‘enrolled’ for up to three years before dropping them from the rolls”. Of the 8.35 million students that the Ministry claims are enrolled, 1.55 million are ‘absent’. Even these numbers could be overly optimistic, as there is no outside verification of the numbers. John Sopko told those attending his May 5 presentation at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York that “I can report that a ranking USAID official in Afghanistan has told us that the number of students actually attending Afghan schools may be on the order of four million, not the eight million widely reported as enrolled. This lower number has been confirmed by a number of Afghan civil society organizations also.” But even this number - more than fifty percent less than official counts - does not necessarily reflect students attending full-time. Even those who currently attend school are often forced to come late or miss classes because they need to work to feed their families. Even for students who attend classes regularly, the quality of education is questionable. A 2011 report by the Afghan Ministry of Education stated that 68% of teachers “did not meet standard qualifications for trained professional teachers (grade 14 graduate of Teacher Education Colleges (TTC), or their
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qualification is lower than 12th grade.” In fact, it is questionable whether all teachers are even literate themselves. As well, schools often lack enough books for the students, or students cannot afford books and supplies. Some ‘schools’ do not have buildings or even tents for the students, but instead are held in open air. In this situation, how could students attend school through Afghanistan’s long, cold winters? Even when there are buildings, they are often in shambles. BuzzFeed News reported that the “overwhelming majority of the more than 50 US-funded schools it visited resemble abandoned buildings — marred by collapsing roofs, shattered glass, boarded-up windows, protruding electrical wires, decaying doors, or other structural defects. At least a quarter of the schools BuzzFeed News visited do not have running water.” A report by the SIGAR office found many of the same concerns. Even those fortunate enough to attend a school with qualified teachers in an actual building do not receive the same level of education we would see in most countries, including Afghanistan’s neighbours. School days are about three hours, and the curriculum varies widely - Dari or Pashto, English, math and science are taught in some schools, while others only teach basic literacy and religious subjects. Girls Losing Out For girls and young women - who the US and NATO claimed they were in Afghanistan to ‘liberate’ - education has in fact improved very little. As noted earlier, girls are overcounted by about 40% in schools. While the lack of girls in school is often blamed on Afghanistan’s social conservatism, the reality is that there are often simply no schools for them to attend. Many Afghan girls and young women would