Afghanistan Times
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Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world because literacy program has been failed as at least 60 percent of Afghan masses are illiterate. Afghan male and female both have been marred from going to school at some stages. The high variation between male and female literacy rate, is due to combination of factors, such as cultural norm of women not attending school and spending time managing the household, security problems in travelling to classes, and sometimes family not allowing women to attend classes. Moreover, the disparity in urban and rural areas in adult education rate is due to security problems, furthermore lack of schools in remote areas, long walking distance to schools, and low demand for literacy in particular for women literacy due to cultural barriers. These obstacles put Afghanistan among the highest illiteracy rates in the world. “Unfortunately, we are among those countries which have the highest percentage of illiteracy. The most optimistic statistics are still between 60 to 65 percent of the country’s population,” Second Vice President, Mohammad Sarwar Danish said. The more annoying is that Afghanistan has 10 million illiterate people—most of whom are women. This is horrifying news. Pursing education is an obligation to both male and female. Based on Islamic teachings, we have to provide education facilities to our girls and boys without any discrimination. Any lapse in this regard would be great injustice. Moreover, Islam says that knowledge is a duty and right of all Muslim. Insecurity in some district of Kabul is a serious problem for the literacy training programs, but worse than that is the lack of awareness among the people, Kabul Governor, Yaqub Haidari lamented. Moreover, according to Deputy Head of Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Khanjan Alokozay, at last 80 percent of their workers are illiterate. At the same time, he assured to help Ministry of Education in its efforts to boost literacy training programs. According to figures by the Ministry of Education, less than 45 percent of Afghanistan’s population is literate. Like night and day is not the same, so literate and illiterate is not the same. Night means a person who doesn’t have education, because night is dark and if we wake in the dark we will fall. But in daylight we will see and avoid mistakes. Education is like glasses that through it we can know what is right and what is wrong. There is a phrase saying readers are leaders. This is often quoted as community activists discuss the value of literacy in society. This is absolutely right, by education we can push our country toward peace and stability. Today we need education more than any other thing. We will never thing of wrongdoings by light of education. Taliban and other militant outfits are fighting against government and this due to lack of knowledge that could pursed by education. Those have knowledge will never kill their brothers and sisters in the most brutal way like carrying suicide attacks. But the militants are doing that. Other issues like honor killing, robbery, abduction, rape, and so much other sour practice, is only due to illiteracy that our society has been facing with. It is our duty to send our boys and girls to schools and provide them suitable education grounds in order to protect our society for all sorts of miseries, and also safe our children from being labeled as illiterate—the mother of all problems.
