Children and Education Must Not Be Held Hostage
By Mushtaq Chhapra
Karachi, Pakistan
Sometimes, it’s more comfortable just to tune out bad news. The dripping tap of negativity in the media can eventually become so dehumanizing, it defines a country like Pakistan in the eyes of the world. Then something so terrible happens that you simply have to sit up and take notice. On December 16, Peshawar was just such an atrocity. The slaying of so many students and teachers in the very school that was supposed to be their sanctuary is impossible to ignore, whether you live in London, Los Angeles or Liberia.
For once, the focus is on the victims, and not the perpetrators. And it turns out these victims could be your children or mine. Their parents saw them off to school that morning, perhaps with a hug and a reminder not to forget their homework. They were all our children that day and their fate haunts every one of us.
If there is any good to come out of the events of December 16, it is that the world can no longer afford to look away. It is also imperative that Pakistanis take it upon themselves to look straight into the eye of the extremists and say categorically, “No More”. The persecution of school children must stop now and education must be protected as a right of every Pakistani child. The only answer to a wake-up call like this is to ensure that the deaths of those children stand for something. When the headlines move on—as they already have — the resolve to be an agent of change must remain.
One must assume that the terrorists behind the senseless slaughter were operating under the delusion that any publicity is good if it draws attention to their cause. Their reasoning is horribly misled. But the target they chose, whether for publicity or retribution, must now become a symbol of all that can be good in Pakistan.
This is a vibrant, beautiful country with a burgeoning population full of expectation and potential. Its problems have little to do with faith and everything to do with the intolerance of a small minority of violent extremists who find erroneous glory in a school attack as a means of settling scores, or another ridiculous effort to prey on the minds of gullible youth, the uneducated and the misinformed. The way things are, there is a deep pool of vulnerable youth available to be drafted into extremist pursuits — and the pool is getting bigger.
With a population approaching 200 million, nearly 25% of its people cannot read or write at more than a very basic level. While national statistics report that 70 percent of children are enrolled in primary education, 50 percent drop out before reaching the sixth grade. The state of the public school system is bleak, to say the least. Pakistan has millions of children out of school. Reliable estimates put the number of out-of-school-children as high as 25 million and growing every year. Education is undoubtedly a huge part of Pakistan’s problem.
In 1995, five Karachi businessmen were looking for a way to give back to the country they loved. While they had all found success, many others needed help. Knowing that there’s but a small window of opportunity for the young child — that education happens at the right age, or it never does — these businessmen embarked on an experiment in affordable, quality education for those who couldn’t afford it. They pooled resources to build five schools in some of Karachi’s poorest slums. Five schools soon became 50. There are now more than 1,000 school units across Pakistan and growing at an impressive 10% every year, with donor support from all over the globe. I am humbled to say that I was among the five co-founders of our modest beginning of The Citizens Foundation (TCF).
The mandate for the professionally managed nonprofit was simple and unyielding: education should be for everyone, regardless of wealth, and girls should have the same opportunity as boys.
To persuade parents to send their daughters to school, we decided on an all-female corps of teachers. To ensure that the poorest kids could come to the schools, we located the schools in the center of the poorest neighborhoods. And, we provided school vans for the teachers to reach the schools and safely back home, thus eliminating most common reasons for teacher absence.
TCF will dedicate its next 141 schools in memory of the victims who died at the school in Peshawar. It is a strong statement to reject the violence and stay on course with our mission: education for all children.
This is a defining moment in Pakistan's history. With formidable challenges facing the nation, we passionately believe that only education has the power to enlighten minds, instill citizenship and unleash the potential of every Pakistani.
Dr Irfan Muzaffar is an educator, researcher and education reform activist. In the aftermath of Peshawar, he wrote that Pakistan is a country “... in which ‘seeds of change’ have been planted,” adding, “The only true homage to those who laid down their lives is a transformation in the state of our education. No child should be left alone to drift into the abyss of terrorism. None of them should have their life choices curtailed by being placed in religious seminaries at a tender age.” Dr Muzaffar has been taking notice. He is very aware that a broken education system is at the root of Pakistan’s troubles. He understands what that means for security issues extending way beyond its borders.
The worry is that the rest of the world will lose focus on the importance of educating Pakistan’s young. The recent horrific events in Paris are symptomatic of the issues we are facing with extremism. The Peshawar massacre was at the very root of the problem. Too much is at stake to take the easy way out and look for strictly short-term solutions.
At a recent education reform conference co-hosted by TCF and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, former US national security advisor Bruce Riedel warned that Washington had allowed Pakistan to slip off the foreign policy agenda. “That’s not a policy. Giving up [on Pakistan] is not a policy,” he added. “This country is far too important to just neglect.”
With thoughtful, progressive ideas, the education experts and economists at the conference debated how they believe Pakistan’s education crisis should be tackled. They may have differed on strategy but no one doubted that, left as it was, the rise of extremist ideology in Pakistan represents a very real threat to the West and indeed to the rest of the world. As well received as it was among the education community, the conference barely registered a ripple in the US media. Perhaps the drumbeat of bad news from Pakistan was just too loud. Then came the horror of Peshawar.
A second TCF-hosted conference on education reform was just concluded in partnership with University of California, Berkeley. The focus at this forum was innovative technological solutions for Pakistani education. We believe that the only way forward is to have focused dialog and to find solutions to the grave social malaise that grips Pakistan. Educational solutions are the only way to erase the ugly nightmare of the past.
The children of Peshawar are not the only victims. Millions of children across Pakistan are being robbed of the education they deserve and more murder and mayhem will inevitably ensue if this reality isn’t addressed. The wholesale slaughter of innocent children is not just one country’s problem. We must seek the solution together. The world cannot tune out Pakistan any longer. The common future of all our children could depend on educating Pakistani children.
Our schools are beacons of light, showing the way in fair weather or stormy nights. At TCF, what we do best is educate children, and enable good citizenship and tolerance. We will continue to provide more opportunities for our future generations to fight against extremism through balanced and quality education. For our children, indeed for all children of the world, we welcome your participation and support in this international endeavor. (The writer is Chairman and Co-founder of The Citizens Foundation)
