*Then, I'll read the following passage out loud from Malala's memoir
Purpose for reading: to consider Malala’s description of conditions she believes should be changed through education in Pakistan in order to explore the importance of equal education for a country’s well being.
Directions for interacting with the text: Please mark places where Malala describes unequal educational practices with an (!) and places where she emphasizes the importance of education with a (*).
After you’ve marked the text, please write your thinking next to two !s and two *s → why did you mark them as you did?
1 (The founder of our country) Jinnah said, “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.” But (in 1977 a new leader) General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman’s evidence in court to count for only half that of a man’s. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant and was then sent to prison for adultery because she couldn’t find four male witnesses to prove it was a crime. A woman couldn’t even open a bank account without a man’s permission. As a nation we have always been good at hockey, but Zia made our female hockey players wear baggy trousers instead of shorts, and stopped women playing some sports altogether.
2 When I complained about these things to my father, he told me that life was harder for women in Afghanistan. The year before I was born, a group called the Taliban led by a one-eyed mullah (holy man) had taken over the country and was burning girls’ schools. They were forcing men to grow beards as long as a lantern and women to wear burqas. Wearing a burqa is like walking inside a big fabric shuttlecock with only a grille to see through and on hot days it’s like an oven. At least I didn’t have to wear one. He said that the Taliban had even banned women from laughing out loud or wearing white shoes, as white was “a color that belonged to men.” Women were being locked up or beaten just for wearing nail varnish. I shivered when he told me such things.
3 I was ten when the Taliban came to our valley. Their leader Maulan Fazlullah was a 28 year-old who used to operate the pulley chair to cross the Swat River. Fazlullah’s broadcasts were often aimed at women. He must have known that many of our men were away from home, working in coal mines in the south or on building sites in the Gulf. Sometimes he would say, “Men, go outside now. I am talking to the women.” Then he’d say, “Women are meant to fulfill their responsibilities in the home. Only in emergencies can they go outside, but then they must wear the veil.”
4 (One Taliban leader) proclaimed that there should be no education for women, even at girls’ madrasas (religious schools). “If someone can show any example in history where Islam allows a female madrasa, they can come and piss on my beard,” he said. Then Fazlullah turned his attention to schools. He began speaking against school administrators and congratulating girls by name who left school. “Miss So-and-so stopped going to school and will go to heaven,” he’d say, or, “Miss X of Y village has stopped education at Class 5. I congratulate her.” Girls like me who still went to school he called buffaloes and sheep.
5 Then, at the end of 2008, Fazlullah’s deputy announced on the radio that all girls’ schools would close. From 15 January girls must not go to school he warned. First I thought it was a joke. “How can they stop us from going to school,” I asked my friends. They don’t have the power. My father used to say the people of Swat and the teachers would continue to educate our children until the last room, the last teacher and the last student was alive. My parents never once suggested I should withdraw from school, ever. Though we loved school, we hadn’t realized how important education was until the Taliban tried to stop us. Going to school, reading and doing our homework wasn’t just a way of passing time. It was our future. The Taliban could take our pens and books, but they couldn’t stop our minds from thinking.
6 One day my father and I went to Peshawar (an important city in Pakistan) to appear on a BBC Urdu (middle-eastern language) talk show hosted by a famous columnist named Wasatullah Khan. We went with my father’s friend and his daughter. Two fathers and two daughters. To represent the Taliban, they had Muslim Khan who wasn’t in the studio. I was a bit nervous, but I knew it was important as many people all over Pakistan would be listening. “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” I said. There was no response from Muslim Khan because his phone interview had been pre-recorded.
7 Our words were like the eucalyptus blossoms of spring tossed away on the wind. The destruction of schools continued. On the night of 7 October 2008 we heard a series of faraway blasts. The next morning we learned that masked militants had entered (a school for girls and a school for boys) and blown them up using improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
8 I wanted people to know what was happening. Education is our right, I said. Just as it is our right to sing. Islam has given us this right and says that every girl and boy should go to school. The Quran (Islamic holy book) says we should seek knowledge, study hard and learn the mysteries of our world. I wanted to start an education foundation. This had been on my mind ever since I’d seen children working on a rubbish mountain. I still could not shake the image of the black rats I had seen there, and a girl with matted hair who had been sorting rubbish. We held a conference of twenty-one girls and made our priority education for every girl in Swat (our valley) with a particular focus on street children and those in child labor.
9 (The Taliban ruled that all girls’ schools must close in January of 2009). How could they stop more than 50,000 girls from going to school in the twenty-first century? I kept hoping something would happen and the schools would remain open. But finally the deadline was upon us. I cried and cried. I didn’t want to stop learning. I was only eleven years old, but I felt as though I had lost everything. I told (the media), “They cannot stop me. I will get my education if it’s at home, school or somewhere else. This is our request to the world -- to save our schools, save our Pakistan.”
*Students will then be asked to read it on their own and annotate the text using the criteria mentioned above.
*Students will discuss their annotations of the text with a partner and fill out the following sheet:
1. Share what you annotated - where is unequal education happening (!) and what are the consequences?
2. Where in the story did Malala talk about the importance of education (*)?
3. How does this connect to your own life? Your partner’s life?
4. So, why is it beneficial to have equal education for everyone?
*Students will then write on the following prompt:
How do unequal practices (such as in Malala’s Pakistan or the United States) affect a society? → Argue the benefits of equal education for everyone.
Cite evidence from the text (and your personal experience) to support your argument.
I'm looking for a writing sample from the students to see how well they are able to incorporate knowledge they have learned from a text and cite their sources. I will use this information to help direct the writing for the rest of the year.
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