If a strong educational system is key to a country's success, there is every reason to worry about Afghanistan's future. Decimated by decades of war, Afghanistan has one of the world's lowest literacy rates. According to UN estimates, 90% of women, and 63% of men in rural areas are illiterate. With most Afghans living in rural villages, improving these numbers is a daunting challenge.
Afghanistan: Education and the Legacy of War
Published July 8, 2009
Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center
So what time do you start working each morning, I ask? I work from 5 AM to noon. Then I go home and get ready for school. How much do you make each day delivering water? I make fifty to sixty Afghanis (one dollar to one dollar and twenty cents). Do you do any other types of work? I lay bricks too. When did you learn to lay bricks? When I was eight.
I walk with Nassar as he continues to roll his wheelbarrow down the dirt road, straining under the weight of the many ten and twenty-gallon containers filled with water. As he continues on I ask him what his father does for a living? He can't work, he has shrapnel in his legs from the war. Do you have any brothers? Yes, one. Does he work? No, he lost his leg. I visit Nassar at his school the next day.
He has a backpack, and a baseball cap, seemingly important items for Kabul's young schoolboys. But he has no books in his backpack, no paper, and only a single pen. He sits on the floor in a class of over forty boys, listening to the lesson delivered in the afternoon's sweltering heat. I had asked him if he intended to stay in school through twelfth year, and he said he did. He added that his favorite subject is Dari and hopes to attend university. I asked him why. Because I want to be someone someday.
This lesson investigates the dangers and daily challenges faced by many Afghan students, teachers, and schools.
The Pulitzer Center is presenting five panel discussions February 22-26, featuring Pulitzer Center journalists who have reported from Afghanistan.
Grantee
Shaun McCanna is an independent documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist. He has been working in Afghanistan the past three years, and his reporting stems from research conducted for his...
