'Back to school' for 1.5 million Afghan children (and more from other newssources)

Many school buildings, long silent and empty, are bursting at the seams with children eager to learn amid a handful of teachers determined to teach, however difficult the conditions.

In Afghanistan’s native languages, they call it “Sabak,” meaning the return of learning. UNICEF calls it “Back to School”.

Whatever name it goes by, Afghanistan is in the midst of a massive campaign to register children for the new school year and get schools, classrooms, teachers and supplies ready.

On 21 March – New Year’s Day in Afghanistan – the country will celebrate the start of a new school year. On 23 March, with winter slowly receding, the nation’s schools will officially open. At least 1.5 million children of elementary school age are expected to turn up, twice as many as in recent years.

UNICEF is playing a major role in supporting the ‘Back to School’ campaign, which is being led by the Afghan government and the Afghan people. UNICEF’s chief role is to ensure the delivery of learning supplies – textbooks, workbooks, pencils and the like – for more than 1 million children. And to supply their teachers with chalk boards, teaching materials, and training in the new school curriculum that has been developed by the education authorities, with UNICEF’s help. Tents for temporary classrooms are part of the effort too. UNICEF is providing hundreds of large tents, along with portable toilets, to make sure that both girls and boys have a school that welcomes them and makes them feel they belong.

UNICEF is also working with the BBC to broadcast a series of radio messages (in local languages) encouraging parents to register their children for school and providing needed information about the new schools. Local Afghan radio is also carrying the messages.

Many Afghans cannot wait. In villages and towns from Herat to Kabul, home schools that enabled some girls and boys to learn in secret during the Taliban years have remained open through the winter months. Many school buildings, long silent and empty, are bursting at the seams with children eager to learn amid a handful of teachers determined to teach, however difficult the conditions.

The brand new Ministry of Education, with the help of UNICEF and other partners, is trying to keep pace with the demand for support. UNICEF has provided teaching and learning kits to hundreds of these home schools, giving children who have not been in school for years a chance to begin catching up.

Ensuring that more than 1.5 million children are in school, ready to learn, on 23 March is a much larger task. The new administration wants this to be a national event, a powerful symbol of commitment to the future. But the ‘Back to School’ campaign is not fully funded yet.

Rebuilding school buildings is not the main expense for now. Any safe place will suffice as a learning space in the short term. But teachers have to be selected, trained and paid. Textbooks are being printed, school supplies ordered and distributed. These are huge logistic challenges for a country with a poor road network, shattered infrastructure, shattered lives and a heavy infestation of land mines.

Yet the desire to succeed is great, and UNICEF is doing all it can to help. Many UN agencies including UNDP, UNESCO, WFP, OCHA and a host of international and national non-governmental organizations are also supporting the Ministry of Education in making the campaign a success.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The school year begins today in Afghanistan, with many girls who were denied an education by the Taliban making their first appearance in classrooms.

The Taliban regime shuttered girls schools when it came to power six years ago and paid little attention to formal education for boys.

Today, with an influx of international aid, the reconstruction of the education system in Afghanistan has become a serious endeavor.

The United States and other foreign governments have provided Afghan children with new schools, uniforms, textbooks and knapsacks for the start of the school year.

A flagship UNICEF education program, dubbed "Back to School," hopes to draw 1.5 million primary school-age children into classrooms.

But low enrollment rates, decaying school buildings and a lack of teachers pose obstacles.

Many schools resemble charred bomb shelters — no heat, no water and with plastic sheets in the windows. Few, if any, instructors have received formal training as teachers; many lack a high school education.

"By now, I should be graduating high school," 16-year-old Latifa Samadi told the Associated Press. "But I'm happy we're back."

She completed sixth grade before the Taliban took over in 1996. She will enter the eighth grade today and likely will not graduate from high school before age 20.

"I want to be a doctor," the teen-ager said, sitting in her classroom at Mir Ahmad Shahid School, which was destroyed during factional fighting in 1992 and rebuilt in the past two months.

Despite a countrywide assessment, the Ministry of Education is still not sure precisely how many students, teachers, or even structurally sound schools exist.

Afghan Minister of Education Abdul Rassoul Amin, who was educated in Australia, recently walked into the UNICEF office and said, "This Back to School program is my baby — it cannot fail."

"Even though UNICEF has been in Afghanistan for 50 years, this is the first time that we have had the funds to really do something good," said Jeanine Wright, the UNICEF Back to School program coordinator.

The initiative is funded by UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Borje Almquist, spokesman for the Swedish Afghanistan Committee that runs several hundred rural schools, said the system is stretched thin by a lack of teachers.

"The local people want the schools and education, but in order to have schools you first need to have teachers and you can't just pull literate people out of thin air," Mr. Almquist said.

The curriculum for first through third grades includes instruction in Dari and Pashtu, the dominant languages of Afghanistan, as well as arithmetic.

After three years, the focus shifts to reading, writing and arithmetic — and other subjects such as calligraphy, history, art and science.

Interim leader Hamid Karzai said recently: "The fall of the Taliban meant a return of dignity to the people of Afghanistan.

"The people feel like this is a whole new era, and this new era means education — education to the point of saturation for man, woman and child — and I will stake my reputation on it."

This Saturday, March 23, will be a great day of celebration. It is the first day of school in Afghanistan. Unlike your school year, which starts in August or September and ends in May or June, most of Afghanistan's schools start in March and end in December. You have a summer vacation, while most Afghan children break from school during the harshest months of the winter. Children return to school after Nawrz Roz, the New Year holiday in Afghanistan.

In preparation for the first day of school in Afghanistan, President and Mrs. Bush discussed the U.S. contributions to the women and children of Afghanistan at Samuel W. Tucker School in Alexandria, Virginia on March 20, 2002. Mrs. Bush announced a new global partnership to help provide school uniforms and jobs to the women and girls of Afghanistan.

This is the first time in several years that many Afghan boys and girls--especially girls--will have the chance to attend school. The people of Afghanistan have been hurt by years of civil war and a brutal government that didn't give its citizens the freedoms that we enjoy. When the Taliban regime was running the country (from 1996 through 2001), girls were banned from the classroom. Women teachers weren't allowed to teach. Not many boys went to school either. Only 32 percent of Afghanistan's 4.4 million children were enrolled in school in 1999. Nearly all girls, 92 percent, were not in school.

Today Afghanistan has a new government and students and teachers now have the freedom to return to school.

These schools look different than you might imagine. For example, years of fighting have destroyed Afghanistan's 3,600 schools. Many schools don't have windows or even walls. Some schools meet under trees, and others don't have desks, blackboards or even basic school supplies like pencils, paper, erasers and schoolbooks.

The United States government is working through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other humanitarian organizations to provide school supplies and equipment, train teachers, improve libraries and work with local communities to repair schools.

USAID is partnering with the University of Nebraska at Omaha and UNICEF to print and distribute nearly 10 million textbooks for grades 1 through 12. Like many American students, Afghan youth study science, math, reading, civics and social studies.

The donations from American children are providing many Afghan children with the school supplies they desperately need. Learn more about America's Fund for Afghan Children.

Please visit the UNICEF site for some stories from Afghanistan.

It was on the news today.

Images of Afghans childeren who went to school, many of them for the first time, after the Taliban banned girls over 12 from getting education.

At one school 3,500 childeren turned up! And there was applause, another thing banned by the Taliban. The kids were so excited and filled with joy.

The people in Afghanistan are more free now. They are free to get educated, and they are accepting that right with open arms.

When seeing how happy these kids are again, I know we did the right thing by freeing them from the Taliban!

I just think of my daughter--had she been told by the state that she couldn't learn--and her life would be at risk-- it'd be the first thing she'd thirst for beyond all else. I admire the courage of RAWA for bringing their dream of knowledge to these girls. With donations from our children to theirs, and help from other organizations, that dream is becoming reality. A nation that does not educate its children is doomed to fail.

"UNICEF is playing a major role "

Be careful what you wish for, if the United Nations is in on this, will the education be 'One World' oriented? I fear this might boost sales of Hitlery's 'Village' book.

These 'open' minds are ripe for the liberal brainwashing that's headed their way. (Did you pay your global taxes kids?)

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