“A Hole in the Education System”: The State of Girls’ Education in Taliban’s Afghanistan

 A look into the learning environment of girls’ education in Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban banned Afghan girls from attending secondary school on March 23, 2022, the battle for girls’ education in Afghanistan has become exacerbated. According to a report conducted by UNICEF in 2021, 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are out of school, 60% of which are girls. 

Afghanistan has notoriously become the world’s only country where girls aren’t permitted to attend secondary schools, solely because of their gender. 

The sensitive subject of girls’ schooling in Afghanistan has raised questions, not only about their receiving a complete education, but in regards to what exactly it is they’re learning under the Taliban’s regime, and in what kind of learning environment? 

“In 32 provinces, teenage girls have been unable to return to high school for well over a year (the schools already closed due to a second COVID scare during the Republic when the Taliban returned to power),” says Al Jazeera English Journalist Ali M. Latifi, who has been living and reporting in Kabul since 2013. “But young girls can go to school up to the sixth grade and young women can go to university. Again, it’s one of those things that makes no sense to the people…why are some girls allowed to go to school and others aren’t?”

Associate Director of Women’s Rights at Human Rights Watch, Heather Barr explains that, “There are few provinces where local pressure and accommodation by local Taliban leaders led to them opening schools and at least some of the secondary schools – but that has been a small minority of provinces, and even in those provinces we’ve documented the fact that girls and teachers have faced harassment and pressure not to study and teach.”

In defiance of the Taliban’s regime, an alternative for attending school is for people to hold “underground schools,” an option that many students use to continue their childrens’ education. According to an article the Washington Post published as far back as 2012, in some villages “the schools have gone underground, hidden in living rooms and guesthouses.” 

However, according to Barr, this learning alternative is far from efficient “Students and teachers [are] at risk all the time from retaliation by the Taliban and they have to teach and study in a very covert way,” compounding the possibility of girls studying more than one to two hours a day. “A small proportion of girls may be managing to attend some kind of underground school, but that will be a small minority,” Barr explained. 

Many girls’ studies are also inhibited because of dress codes imposed by the Taliban, which specifically pertain to how teachers and female pupils must wear the hijab. According to Human Rights Watch, one local teacher in Balkh province reports that “the requirements on hijab are getting tougher day by day,” and that “they have spies to record and report….If students or teachers don’t follow strict hijab rules, without any discussion they fire the teachers and expel the students.”

A BBC documentary published in May of 2022 features one female teacher who happened to be holding a secret school in a residential neighborhood for girls; the school primarily focused on math, biology, chemistry, and physics. When asked if she was afraid of what might happen to her if the Taliban were to discover her secret school, the teacher replied, “If they arrest me, beat me…it’s worth it to [teach].” 

A Trip Inside the Classroom (video link) 

The new academic curriculum for elementary and secondary schools was introduced in 2001 by the Taliban and, according to the Minister of Education of Afghanistan Rangina Hamidi, “was overwhelmingly big and not very effective because there was content that was not relevant to the context of Afghanistan.”

“There was a subject called ‘civics,’” recalls Hamidi, “and in it we had a whole lesson on traffic lights. Afghanistan as a country never really had roads and traffic lights in the entire country to begin with….I am not saying that teaching about traffic lights is a bad thing, but how many children did it impact? Instead, why didn’t we teach kids things like how to take care of our villages, counties, cities, and country? Why didn’t we teach lessons about peace and conflict?  Why didn’t we teach our children about honesty? Unity? Diversity? Working together for a common mission and cause? Why didn’t we teach history as a learning lesson to not repeat the mistakes of our forefathers?”

As of now, the most noticeable difference in the change of both girls’ and boys’ education is how many secular subjects have been replaced with more Islamic studies. 

Islamic education in Afghan schools consists of the Qur’an, prayers, Hadith, Islamic history and culture. “In Afghan education in general, Islam has always been very much ingrained,” Latifi noted. “For example, ‘Alef is for Allah.’ A lot of the literacy books also have Islamic themes and characters. Islam has always been a deep part of the Afghan education system.”

The Taliban’s imposition on the secondary education of Afghan girls has, understandably, had a grim impact on girls in primary schools. Barr explains that students are “intentionally failing sixth grade so that they can take sixth grade again,” in an attempt to remain in school for at least one more year before they lose that opportunity.

“Essentially, there is a hole in the education system. Primary education is permitted, higher education – in theory, at least – is permitted. But of course, it’s meaningless to have higher education be available when the pipeline of girls entering higher education is cut off,” Barr said.

In other cases, however, many schools are threatened to be shut down if they violate dress code policies, the academic curriculum, or any order from the Taliban. According to an academic paper released by the Center of Study of Armed Groups, “…the UN, New York Times and Human Rights Watch, among others, have documented instances where insurgents are alleged to have attacked, threatened or closed schools…. Attacks on schools are complex and individual incidents are often hard to interpret in any definitive way. However, what often appears to happen is that local Taliban have an issue with a school and forces it to close; in some other cases, schools are targets of opportunity.”