"Her father, who is illiterate, refused to allow his nine daughters and one son to fall into the Taleban trap of non-education. He hired a private tutor for £1.75 a month to teach his two eldest daughters chemistry, biology, Pashtun and Persian. The teacher arrived secretly, wearing a burka and carrying the banned textbooks under the folds.
“My father has a memory of being uneducated,” Zargura said. “He wanted, more than anything, for us to have an education. It was brave of him because if the Taleban caught us, they would have beaten him, or worse.” "
posted on December 10, 2001 11:16:49 PM
This story sure puts things back into perspective for me. I was trying to help my sixth grader with his homework tonight and he got on a "why do we have to learn this" roll... He's studying primary #'s, abundant #'s, etc... none of which makes sense to my non-math brain so I didn't do a very good job of explaining why he "had" to learn it.
It didn't occur to me to tell him he should learn it just because he can... because some kids will never have the choices or the opportunities he has. Kind of like when I was a kid and my mom told me to eat my peas and carrots...
