Current Challenges To Education Development
Violence
Afghanistan is one of the worst affected countries by violence against schools, with 670 incidents of attacks on education in 2008. Violence on students have prevented close to 5 million afghan children from attending school in year 2010. In terms of death rates, Afghanistan had 439 teachers, education employees and students killed in 2006-9, one of the highest in the world.
- Teacher's credentials
Since the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001, up to 6 million girls and boys started attending school. In 2012, the supply of students far exceeded the pool of qualified teachers. According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Education, 80 percent of the country’s 165,000 teachers have achieved the equivalent of a high school education or did not complete their post-secondary studies.
- Extremist curriculum
Since the toppling of the Taliban regime, under the combined efforts of Afghan and international experts, the curriculum has been changed from extremist Islamic teachings to one relatively better with new books, and better training. Yet, there still remains no standard curriculum for secondary school textbooks and high school textbooks remain woefully inadequate in number and content.
- Infrastructure
In 2012, there were insufficient schools. Around 4,500 schools are being built according to a recent government report. 40 percent of schools were conducted in permanent buildings. The rest held classes in the UNICEF shelters or were "desert schools" with students and teachers gathering in the desert near a village.
- Child labour
In 2007, more that half of the population of Afghanistan was under the age of 18. UNICEF estimates that close to a quarter of Afghan children between the ages of seven and fourteen were working. In rural areas, the problem is worse and there are more girls working than boys. This disrupts children’s education and possibly prevents them from schooling completely.
Read more about this topic: Education In Afghanistan
Famous quotes containing the words current, challenges, education and/or development:
“Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ultimately, it is the receiving of the child and hearing what he or she has to say that develops the child’s mind and personhood.... Parents who enter into a dialogue with their children, who draw out and respect their opinions, are more likely to have children whose intellectual and ethical development proceeds rapidly and surely.”
—Mary Field Belenky (20th century)