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From: mansoorirfani@hotmail.com
To: kirfani@aol.com
Sent: 1/18/2010 7:25:52 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: FW: Real Reason of the Growth of Madrassas in Pakistan
From: mahamif@brain.net.pk
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Subject: Fw: Real Reason of the Growth of Madrassas in Pakistan
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:36:45 +0500
Those of us who condemn mullah for establishing madrassas and the downtrodden class for sending their children to be "educated" there do not realize that it is a matter of simple economics. The poor masses have no choice except free-madrassas. Secular education in Pakistan is a luxury and available only to those who have tesha-e-zar.
It is a failure of our corrupt secular ruling class (equally corrupts like mullah in robes) that has been ruling Pakistan. They steal public money and get the corruption cases NROed. They have been wasting resources on military adventures like Siachen and Kargil but have no funds for education. This is what Mortenson wrote in his book Three Cups of Tea when he visited a "school" in a small village called Korphe in Baltistan's where he ended up after a failed attempt to reach K-2. (The way that villagers looked after an ill and frost bitten white Christian American is a story worth reading. They may be poor and illiterate but they have human values and the heart of gold. I sometime doubt that we who are living in the west and concerned by the square footage of our homes and mortgage interest rates are really that civilized. Many of us have not even seen those places in Pakistan but we have the audacity to pass judgment on the intelligence of the people from our centrally air-conditioned houses.) There was no school building and no teachers. Children were sitting on the ground under a tree . They were using sticks and dirt for writing as a piece of chalk and a slate was a luxury. The experience was so heart wrenching for Mortenson that he decided to do some thing. The rest is history. Since mid-nineties he has established more then 100 schools in the most difficult terrain. Contrary to the common belief, Mortenson has been enjoying full support from the villagers who frequently climbed for miles with heavy building material on their shoulders and provided free labour for building schools. Also it is interesting to note that the villagers were keen to educate their daughters.
It is wrong to assume that Pakistan's poor people do not want to give modern education to their children and prefer madarsssa education. The fact is that primary education is unaffordable and the successive governments have abdicated their responsibility, leaving the field to profit driven private schools or free "education" by mulla-run schools. Pakistan is now reaping the bitter harvest of those ill-considered policies. I recommend that those who have interest in the subject should read Three Cups of Tea. They will find that our poor people are hungry for real education and how callously they have been deprived of this basic right. The book is available in all public
Libraries
Anis Zuberi
Mortenson's new book, Stones into Schools, is a sequel to the phenomenally popular Three Cups of Tea.
Stones into Schools: Mortenson climbs another mountain
How a failed attempt on K2 produced 131 schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan
Author Greg Mortenson sees education as the solution to terrorism.
COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STARGreg Mortenson, the humanitarian author of a bestselling memoir about his successful campaign to build schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, was thrilled by the prospect of a first-time visit to Toronto this week – and not only because a benefactor provided him with free tickets to Tuesday night's Leafs game.
"I love librarians," says Mortenson, who has an event Wednesday night at the Toronto Reference Library to promote his new book, Stones into Schools, a sequel to the phenomenally popular Three Cups of Tea.
"Librarians and teachers are my heroes. And Toronto has the biggest library system in the world. So I'm really excited."
Mortenson's debt to librarians dates back to 1993 when he set out to fulfill his promise to build a school in the small Pakistani village of Korphe. The former mountaineer had made the commitment while being given refuge in Korphe after a failed attempt to scale K2. But he didn't have a clue where to begin when he returned home to Montana.
"I had no idea how to fundraise," he says. "I went to the local library and told them I needed to raise $12,000 to build a school in Pakistan. They helped me look up the names of 580 celebrities and movie stars. I hand-typed those letters. I only got one cheque back, but it was basically the librarians who helped me get started."
That one cheque was a $100 donation from Tom Brokaw, the now retired NBC TV news anchor. Since that modest start, Mortenson's Central Asian Institute has built 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing education for 58,000 students, including 44,000 girls. The organization has also built another 60 temporary schools for 25,000 students in refugee camps.
Mortenson also became an author and reluctant celebrity after the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, a richly anecdotal account of his conversion from adventurer into humanitarian that details the construction of that first Pakistan school. The book, published in nearly 40 countries, has sold more than three million copies. Stones into Schools picks up the story, focusing mainly on the building of a school in Afghanistan's remote Wakhan Corridor.
"The overall mission is to promote girls' education in areas where there is no education," he says. "And those areas tend to be areas of extreme isolation, areas of conflict or war, and areas of religious extremism."
Mortenson, who repeatedly insists that the problems facing Afghanistan do not have a military solution, points to education as a sign that progress is being made in the country. In 2000, school enrolment in the country was 800,000 students, the vast majority of them boys. Today, 8.5 million students, including 2.5 million girls, attend school.
"When women become educated, they are much less likely to encourage their sons to get involved in terrorism or violence. The Taliban's primary recruiting grounds are among the impoverished and illiterate segments of society because the majority of educated women will discourage their sons from getting involved with violence and terrorism."
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