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Strollerderby
“Who Doesn’t Love School?”
In case you (like me) missed last night’s PBS documentary about the difficulties many children face in getting a basic education, Jezebel has a great synopsis, with clips, that is well worth a read. Time for School is a 12-year documentary project that follows seven children from around the world as they struggle to complete their studies; the third episode, which follows an Aghan teenager, aired last night and will continue on September 12.
If your kids are complaining about going back to school, you may want to tell them about Shugufa, an Afghan 16-year-old girl, who dreams of becoming an engineer, journalist, or doctor, but faces great obstacles in simply finishing high school. She faces the risk of violent attacks by the Taliban–which closed down 600 schools just last year–and has so many household chores that she rarely has time to study, a fact that distresses her immensely. “Who doesn’t love school?” she says.
Still, Shugufa is comparatively lucky. Even though only girls in her family are made to do chores while boys play–”If boys do housework in Afghanistan, they get laughed at,” Shugufa says–her father is a firm believer in education for women. Apparently, he is not in good company: 75 percent of Afghan girls drop out of school by age 16. And 73 million children worldwide–two-thirds of whom are girls–don’t go to school at all.
It’s enough to make me feel pretty silly about all the complaining I did about my seventh-grade English teacher….
Photo: ABCnews.com
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0 Comments
Manjari commented on Sep 04 09 at 6:19 pmThat looks very interesting, thanks! I’m going to check it out on the 12th.
hannahtm commented on Sep 07 09 at 1:08 pmOops–I had the date wrong. It actually airs on September 9. Do check it out!
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