A New Lesson Plan in Afghan School

At Mir Ahmad Shahid Primary School--to reach it, drive to the damaged cinema, cross onto a dirt track, twist around a few curves and then park by a fetid gutter--there was a rare sight Wednesday. Smiles.

Beaming boys and girls lined up to mark the dedication of their freshly painted, newly windowed school building, the fruit of round-the-clock labor by Los Angeles-based Relief International.

But mostly the children, parents and faculty were celebrating the new school epoch that begins Saturday. For the first time since the Taliban conquered this capital in 1996, there will be women teaching openly again, classes that are no longer limited to boys and a fresh curriculum shorn of calls to holy war and hatred of the West.

“I feel I lost part of my life,” said Shakila Shakbaz, a 16-year-old girl who will be going back to school.

She was in the fifth grade when the Taliban took over, and she studied secretly at home enough to pass her sixth-grade test two weeks ago. But she’s still at least four years behind in her studies--a large deficit for a young woman who hopes to become a doctor.

The mood of making up for time lost under the Taliban pervades the effort to get school started quickly and on the right foot this year.

Brightly painted signs abound in this city of 2 million, exhorting parents and students to take advantage of the renewed opportunity to learn and put the dark years of ignorance behind.

“Let’s read” and “Let’s study,” the signs say.

In some parts of the country, street theater troupes have even presented little dramas to show the worth of education.

It has been a herculean task to get all the preparations for school done in the scant four months since the fall of the Taliban in Kabul.

But international organizations credit wholehearted support from the administration of interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and say they will be ready with the needed supplies, textbooks, food and even temporary tents for classrooms. The United States paid for the rush printing of 4 million de-Talibanized textbooks based on the books used before the fundamentalist regime came to power.

The White House took the opportunity Wednesday to publicize the full gamut of U.S. assistance, public and private, to Afghanistan--and then called for more.

So far, American children have responded to the president’s Oct. 11 call by sending $4.6 million to help buy supplies, clothing and medicine for their peers in Afghanistan.

“As a result of what our country and many of our friends have done, girls get to go to school too--starting this week,” President Bush said in Washington.

“And when they go to school, we want to make sure they’ve got supplies. We want to make sure they’ve got tablets to write on and Crayolas to color with, and even jump ropes to jump with,” he said.

Aid officials here say a thirst for education is cresting nationwide, so much so that the student population will be the largest in Afghan history for the start of this school year, which usually begins in March so the children don’t have to endure frigid classrooms during the cold winter months.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has been the main mover behind the nationwide campaign both to encourage pupils to come back to the classroom and to obtain the supplies to make it possible.

Edward Carwardine, a UNICEF spokesman in Kabul, said the effort was the agency’s most ambitious logistics challenge. “It involved packing almost 25 kits with 50 different items every minute, day and night, for more than three weeks,” a UNICEF statement said. But by Saturday, 93% of schools will be outfitted, Carwardine said.

The need is dire, the agency points out: Only an estimated 32% of boys and 8% of girls in Afghanistan have had any kind of elementary education. Exact figures are hard to come by, Carwardine said, but of 4.4 million school-age children, more than 1.7 million are expected to be registered by the first day.

Eric James, the country director here for Relief International, (https://www.ri.org) said the reconstruction of the Mir Ahmad Shahid building--one of 11 school building projects by his group--isn’t a cure-all.

He pointed out that only 10 classrooms are available at the school, which will draw an expected 1,000 students from this west Kabul neighborhood. As a result, the children will have to attend in two shifts. The same is true nationwide. There are simply not enough classrooms.

The newly repaired school was a cheerful sight Wednesday, with whitewashed walls, green trim, brand-new desks and squeaky-clean blackboards. Against the backdrop of a ruined neighborhood that was destroyed by shelling during the fight among warlords in Kabul in the early 1990s, the school looks even more astonishing.

The refurbishing of the building cost $34,000, and the carpentry for new desks and benches for the students added $10,000 more. Funding came in part from the German state aid agency BMZ, with the work done by Relief International.

“Very, very happy,” teacher Latifa Matim said shyly in broken English, describing her feelings during Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. She’s making her first venture back to the classroom in five years.

Through a translator, she said that she had lost hope in the Taliban years when she was banned from working, but now looks forward to helping girls deprived of education. “Those who are illiterate will be able to read,” she said enthusiastically. And the promised monthly salary of 1.3 million afghanis, about $45, will make a big difference for her family, she said.

She said the improvements are wonderful. Gesturing toward the new glass windows, she said, “Before we did not even have windows, not to mention glass.”

Her principal, Mohammed Haq, explained that the shelling had knocked out whole sections of the mud-brick walls, leaving gaping holes where the window frames had been.

“The main difference this year is that the school gates are open to the girls,” he said. “Everybody is happy about it--the old, the young, men and women. Everyone felt sorry and angry before when we could not let girls come to school or hold jobs.”

Haq said he is amazed at how many people from the neighborhood are enrolling their children. The school will grow this year by 150%, he said.

“During the past few years, when so many children were far from learning, they have come to appreciate the value of education more,” he said. “Even those with financial problems are ready to send their children to school.”

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this report.