Education is a strong building block in building a stronger and healthier community.This starts by putting an emphasis on the importance of education for the youth today. As a community, it is necessary to help youth develop their identity and be a contributing factor to society.
As a community we must provide protection, security, knowledge, and most importantly good values. If we can help our youth to become positive and engaging members of society, this will only help in developing, not only a stronger and healthier community, but a safer one as well.
Afghanistan has suffered four decades of devastating war which resulted to migration of millions of people and deprived millions of others inside the country from the education. The children and youth had to take gun to defend themselves rather to study and think upon their future, which made the country face serious of challenges in terms of having experts on different subjects.
Since inauguration of the new government in 2001, the international community and the Afghan government rushed and constructed many schools to ease education for the war-hit nation. Thousands of schools and hundreds of private and state-run institutes of higher education activated and are providing educations to children and young generation of the country.
But despite to education growth, modern education is still a challenge in Afghanistan. Educators are struggling with the aftermath of decades of war and differing political ideologies in the country. The ongoing suicide attacks taking lives of the innocent people everyday and the terrorists don’t hesitate to target the holy places and educational centers.
Such violence and bloodshed have limited the education facilities for the Afghan youth and even the foreign guest lecturers to deliver their knowledge and experiences with the new generation of the country, since they are not feeling insecure and have time and again kidnapped by the enemies of the Afghanistan’s development.
Recently, President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani met with 100 Afghan youths who are going to follow their higher education in Uzbekistan.Addressing to the students, President Ghani told the students that “You take benefit from the given opportunity and make use of it. My anticipation from you is to return home as human capitals after completion of higher education.”
Each one of you is my ambassador to Uzbekistan, so you should represent Afghanistan in a better way,” President Ghani added.The country’s President promised he would provide the students higher education opportunity to MA and PhD levels.
Putting emphasis on education role in rebuilding and strengthening the democratic and modern values, the government of Afghanistan and international community need to lay the foundation of a developed, modern and stable Afghanistan through promoting teaching and learning so that the emerging generation of the country is fairly acquainted with, citizenship rights and responsibilities, democracy and human modern values and wishes to embark on promising measures to save the country but not violence and terror.
Meanwhile those parents who don’t let their children, especially girls go to school, should understand that they are going against scripts of Holy Quran and Islamic teachings. Seeking knowledge is obligation to all human being, girls and boys. Let’s rebuild our country by means of education, taking in view that military means has badly failed so far.
Now it is the time that the guns should be put away and the pen should be used to develop the country and have a bright future for our people.
This article originally appeared on www.thekabultimes.gov.af on January 23, 2018. Original link.
Disclaimer: Views expressed on this blog are not necessarily endorsed or supported by the Center for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad.
