It has been around 15 years since I enrolled at an elementary school in Kabul. There are some of the memories that I vividly remember - things that have shaped what I envision to build.
I went to a public school in Western Kabul. Afghanistan was a “new country” as things were transforming after the Taliban were gone. So were schools.
During my 3rd grade at the school, one day our teacher asked me a question and my answer was not what he had taught us. He ordered me to get in front of the class and asked our 1st positioned classmate to get there and slap and humiliate me. It would have been fine if it was one day, or one school. But it wasn’t. And little has changed in Afghanistan’s schools.
I could bear it until 4th grade. Finally my dad decided to change my school to a private one. I was really happy and getting a long well with my new classmates and teachers. I started liking maths and science, and was becoming good at them. Years passed and the school felt like home. There, I knew I wanted to do more, to become more. But as a young teenager, I was feeling lost. I didn’t know what to do or who to ask. My teachers, even at this descent school, didn’t really understand or believe in me.
I was lucky as I met some good friends who shared the same understanding with me. Many of them had elder brothers who were like a guide to them. I only wished I had someone like my friends had. My family has always been supportive of me, but at those times my elder siblings and parents were busy with their own stuff. I decided to get out to be able to do what I wanted to. A friend of mine and I applied to over a hundred schools around the world with our broken English. I was very fortunate that since then I have got a good education in Japan.
I could “escape” from that schools’ situation in Kabul. But I still wonder how things would have been different for my classmates back in the public school if the teacher had asked the students to explain why they believed their answers were right, instead of forcing them to humiliate and hate each other. I am grateful to all those events as they made me, but what about the many others who cannot manage to break free?
Can you imagine how transforming the schools would be for millions of children if they had someone like a kind and elder brother or sister, and if they were heard, valued and believed in by their teachers?
