Afghanistan Times
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KABUL – In a sweeping overhaul, the Taliban are reshaping Afghanistan’s educational landscape to advance their ideological goals, deeply affecting both boys’ and girls’ education. Since their takeover in 2021, they have banned education for girls past the sixth grade, expanded religious seminaries, and reintroduced corporal punishment. Now, they are rewriting the national curriculum from grades 1 to 12 to instill a religiously strict and ideologically narrow worldview.
This revised curriculum, which has already reached eighth-grade completion, is slated to be approved by the Taliban’s supreme leader within months, setting the stage for rapid implementation. The new content strips away subjects like art, civil education, and human rights while promoting Taliban values, including an emphasis on “emirate studies” that glorify the Taliban’s history and justify violence against opposition.
Additionally, the Taliban have prohibited the study of sciences, philosophy, and banned over 400 books on democracy, rights, and culture, signaling a return to the Taliban’s restrictive educational approach seen in the 1990s. Women are also barred from studying abroad, and all textbooks are purged of images of people, animals, and anatomy, as only God, according to the Taliban, has the right to create life.
Human Rights Watch reports an increase in corporal punishment in schools, with teachers of non-religious subjects like math now required to pass religious tests to retain their jobs. The Taliban’s ultimate goal: cultivate a generation shaped by their values, stripped of critical thinking, and bound to their regime.
The Taliban’s approach threatens to undermine academic freedom, pushing Afghan families to lose trust in public education and leading to an exodus of teachers and students, similar to the education collapse of the 1990s. International donors are also cutting aid, wary of supporting an ideologically driven curriculum, putting Afghanistan’s education system at further risk. As Afghanistan’s schools shift from places of learning to centers of indoctrination, the consequences may reverberate far beyond the country’s borders.
