Since the ouster of Taliban in 2001, one area that has seen significant progress, no matter quantitative, is the education sector of Afghanistan. Although millions of girls and boys are still out of school – most of who work as child laborers, according to Ministry of Education (MoE), approximately 8.2 million students are in school. At the same time, thousands of Afghan students are getting higher education in various countries across the globe. Majority of them are on scholarships.

Progress in education sector has been satisfactory and that is what the international community should be proud of. Nonetheless, constraints to an educated Afghanistan are still concrete. In the insecure provinces, Taliban rules apply.

Girls are not allowed to get education and schools are burnt. There have been incidents where acid has been thrown on faces of girls going to school and schools have been attacked with gases and chemicals.
These issues have, unfortunately, not been settled in the last ten years.

Yet, there is another one. The new school text books published by MoE which will reach students in the next educational year miss the history of 40 years of Afghanistan. The Afghan government has published new textbooks for school children that shun the country's modern history of conflict in an effort to promote national unity, a MoE official said on Tuesday.

"In the past four decades we have had some topics that were controversial," education ministry spokesman Amanullah Iman told - referring to Soviet occupation, civil war, the rise of the Taliban and a US-led invasion. "We have decided not to include them in the new curriculum," he said.

But that era is big enough to be omitted. It is very important to study the past in order to make our future by not repeating our past mistakes. However, it seems like the MoE is trying to deprive our youths from knowing their past. The step taken by MoE has been highly criticized by various circles in Afghanistan. It is pivotal for our coming generations to know about their full history, whether good or bad.

There are many other countries that have gone through severe kinds of wars and conflicts in their histories but they have never made a decision that could resemble to that of our MoE. MoE's decision is really odd.