Afghans are more educated than I thought - 100% can you believe it?

Article written on 15/03/2007

------

There are three types of education systems available to Afghans
1. Conventional Education system (Schools/colleges/universities)
2. Religious education system (Madrasas)
3. Unconventional Education system (explained below)

Every Afghan has been educated with at least one of the above, which makes it 100%. We can use each of these skills to rebuild a self-sufficient state as it requires an aspect of each of them.

I don’t need to explain the conventional and religious education system but the third type is the one that almost every Afghan is educated with and kind of makes us unique from other nations.

It is the system of education that has been thought to us by our parents, relatives, school teachers, religious teachers, etc.

Did you guess it? This system involves the fictional stories and sayings passed down from generation to generation. We are all being taught so much of this without us even realising. We can almost relate every thing that happens in life to one of the stories or at least a saying.

It is the most effective method of education, because it teaches us how to live our lives. We are taught to learn from everything and anything. We just don’t give it enough credit. It teaches us to learn, so even if you haven’t been told a story about something, you can still relate every thing that occurs to a story from your life to learn or teach from it.

Talking about relating a story to everything, here is an example of learning. This was not my first lesson of the unconventional education but one that kicked started the process of benefiting from it for me.

It was the best present my grand mother ever gave me or could give me. It was on the day I failed my maths test in grad 4 and I was very upset. She repeated it to me almost every day before going to school for almost a year so it is stuck in my head and I remember it at every moment of my life.

"Two little boys worked with a tailor. One day they both request their master (tailor) to let them go to the movie. As they were both hard working and nicely behaved boys, the tailor wanted to treat them anyway so he allowed them to go and gave them some money for the tickets and snacks at the cinema.

When they returned, the master asked them how the movie was... One of them started praising how good the movies was and how much he enjoyed himself... The other one said.. the movie was good and we did enjoy ourselves a lot.. but the cloths that the film stars were wearing looked really good... If we sew few pairs we may make some good money... He added, I have pictures of it in my mind and can draw them up if you like... The master got so happy hearing this that he granted the second boy permission to go to the movies every week... "

At the end she would tell me the moral of this story, which according to her was: Education is not in books, it is in your way of thinking and your way of leaning. Think out of the box, you can learn something from everything. Look at everything as a learning opportunity. Success blinds you and failure opens your eyes...

The moral was long and varied every time but the summary is above. You know what? I have never failed since that last time because I never give up. Every day I think about this story and every time I read it to myself I learn something new from it. There is just one bad thing though.. She said that learning is not just in books but I feel like I have been ignoring her "just" all my life and modified it to, "learning is not in books", I concentrate on learning from practical things more than the books but I am working on it.. I want to fix that balance.

This is the story that drives me to this day and gives me that push to get the message of real education to everyone. Share what I learn every day and learn from what I share..

Well anyhow, it proves my point that every Afghan is educated in at least one way, some more than one.

We think Afghans are not educated enough but we are, which should make us better and more successful than anyone else but sadly we don’t realise this. When we do, there will be no stopping us, we will achieve what no one has achieved so far.

All we need to do is realise what we know and use it for the better. With education, sky is the limit. You learn everyday from everything that happens around us. If we pay attention to it, we can use it to polish up our steps to success.

Sharing is also learning so share what you know with others and you will learn more from what you just taught to another person just by sharing it.

If you still think Afghans are not 100% educated, then share those thoughts with me.