Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Efforts to Discourage Modern Education

Taliban insurgents have always opposed the modern education system and in various ways they have tried to bring harm to schools and students and teachers in different parts of the country.

In an incident on Tuesday, April 14, Taliban insurgents blew up a school in Sherin Tagab district of northern Faryab province. According to the reports some armed men in Sahraee-Qala locality of the district placed explosive under the facility and blew the school up. However, the teachers and school staff were not in the school at the time of explosion.

This incident clearly shows the intentions of Taliban and their hatred for modern education. They, in all the possible ways, strive to discourage the modern schools, colleges and universities as they consider them non-Islamic. They believe that their syllabi are based on western education and would ultimately lead the students astray. However, they fail to understand that it is through modern education that the most powerful countries of the world rule the contemporary socio-political and economic scenario.  

Ill-fatedly, Afghanistan is one of the countries that are highly influenced by such people who intend to block all the ways to advancement and modernization. Blinded by religious extremism and obsolete tribal values, they are always ready to oppose any sort of efforts that are dedicated to disseminate education to the people of Afghanistan, as they know that the modern education that has been spread in the country to a certain level may encourage evolution and modern changes.

Taliban are among the same kind of people. They have been trying to eliminate all the efforts that are targeted at spreading modern education in Afghanistan. They, still, live in the era that is ancient and obsolete, but they are not capable of realizing this fact. They, as a matter of fact, strive to obstruct the rising sun, which is impossible, as sun has to rise some day and show its light to the people. And, the people have to follow the light of the sun as walking in dark would never help them and show them their destination.

With the rise of Taliban in 1996, the decline of modern education system, which was already in a pathetic condition, started. Taliban banned the female education and promulgated the madressah system of education. In almost all the madressahs the curriculum contained the Arabic recitation, without translation and further elaboration of different perspectives. The students were confined to a single approach towards education and that was the Clergy approach, which depended on an extremist elucidation of Islam and Islamic concepts. Investigation and research were banned strictly, and students called as Talibs were not allowed to question their teachers. Rather, they were asked to blindly follow what the Clergy approach had to offer them. The basic purpose of education was thus non-existent in the so called education systems of Taliban. They were more like training camps for generating cadre for terrorist groups.

Taliban, today as well, have been making different sorts of efforts to discourage the growth of modern education in Afghanistan in some way or the other. There have been incidents when they have bombed schools, killed the guiltless students and teachers, poisoned the students and even thrown acid on the faces of innocents girls who go to school.

Such a scenario is really tragic and the government must make efforts to launch practical measures to curb the situation. Condemning the incident alone would not be sufficient to discourage such ruthless activities and would in the long run deprive the people of Afghanistan from better opportunities to get education. It is important that the government must inculcate within our people the worth and importance of modern education and must encourage it as much as possible.  

It is an undeniable fact that the nations that have opposed education have, in fact, blocked their own way to success. They are the ones who themselves have tied their feet and hands with the ropes and are not able to move ahead even though they need to do so. At the same time, they are the ones who have blindfolded themselves and think that there isn’t anything around them to see. They are, in short, in the process of fooling their own selves.

Ultimately, they are the ones who would be greatly influenced by the negative impacts of all such behavior. Though they think that they are performing some great service to their nations by keeping it unpolluted and unaffected by the germs of education, in reality, they are bounding and isolating themselves and letting themselves decay instead of being active part of the real world that demands progress, growth and modern education.

At present time, nothing is so urgently required for our nation as modern education – Education that should be based on up to date information, analysis and developments in different fields of knowledge and must be aided with modern technology; education that can give the coming generation of Afghanistan an outlook other than extremism. And all these have to be provided to the people of Afghanistan without charging them much, as majority of the people are already suffering severely under the reign of deteriorated socio-economic situation.