Grade 9 Beginning-of-Year Assessment
Name: _____________________________________ Date: ______________
Task Overview
Malala Yousafzai, a teenager from Pakistan, became an activist and spokesperson for female education when religious extremists, including Taliban officials, began shutting down schools and imposing harsh restrictions on females’ lives. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, Malala was shot in the head on her way to school. Surviving, she has become an international spokesperson for universal education and human rights. She addressed the United Nations on her 16th birthday in July of 2013, and her memoir, I Am Malala, was the 2014-2015 University of Wisconsin-Madison Go Big Read selected book.
Jonathan Kozol and Catherine Meek are writers who discuss educational inequalities in the United States.
You are going to read excerpts from these three authors in order to consider their arguments that education is important for every nation, that all citizens should have access to education equally. As Malala writes, “Going to school, reading and doing our homework wasn’t just a way of passing time. It was our future.”
Why is equal education important to nations and their citizens? Cite evidence from at least two of the three authors as well as your own experiences to form your argument.
Things to think about:
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Purpose for reading: to consider Malala’s description of conditions she believes should be changed through education in Pakistan and Kozol’s and Meek’s descriptions of unequal resources for education in the United States 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, Kozol, and Meek describe unequal educational practices and places where their examples show the importance of education with a (*).
After you’ve marked the texts, please write your thinking next to two (*)’s → why did you mark them as you did?
from I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
1 Islamic laws in Pakistan 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. The leader of the Taliban in my Swat Valley, Fazlullah, would broadcast radio shows 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.”
2 (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.
3 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. I began to speak out, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” I said.
4 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).
5 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.
6 (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.”
7 (I had seen) a young girl selling oranges. She was scratching marks on a piece of paper with a pencil to account for the oranges she had sold as she could not read or write. I took a photo of her and vowed I would do everything in my power to help educate girls just like her. This was the war I was going to fight.
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excerpt modified from Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
1 The city of Detroit.. is poor…. and its school system is so poorly funded that three classes have to share a single set of books in elementary schools. ‘It’s not until the sixth grade,’ the Detroit Free Press reports, ‘that every student has a textbook.’ At MacKenzie High School in Detroit, courses in word processing are taught without word processors. ‘We teach the keyboard...so if they ever get on a word processor, they’d know what to do,’ a high school teacher says. Students ask, ‘When are we going to get to use computers?’ But, their teacher says, the school cannot afford them. Of an entering ninth-grade class of 20,000 students in Detroit, only 7,000 graduate from high school, and, of these, only 500 have the preparation to go onto college. Educators in Detroit, the New York Times reports, say that ‘the financial pressures have reached the point of desperation.’
2 According to a survey by the Free Press, the city spent $3,600 yearly on each child’s education. The suburban town of Grosse Pointe spent some $5,700 on each child. Bloomfield Hills spent even more: $6,250 per pupil. Birmingham, at $6,400 per pupil, spent the most of any district in the area.
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from “We Must Help Our Homeless Children Get an Education” by Catherine Meek
1 Frankie is nine years old. He has a rash all over his face and body -- stress-related said the doctor. He has trouble focusing on his homework and paying attention in school; he has fights in the schoolyard; he has serious mood swings; he has no friends. He lives with his mother and two sisters in one room in a homeless shelter. Frankie is one of our students.
2 The devastating impact of homelessness on children has become starkly clear from decades of study. While poverty alone creates health, developmental, behavioral, and educational problems for children, homelessness compounds these problems by adding additional stress, fear, anxiety and instability to children's lives. Can you imagine how hard it is to learn when you don't have a home? The statistics stacked against homeless students are staggering:
3 Homelessness is extreme poverty. Lack of affordable housing, poverty, and unemployment -- the top three causes of family homelessness -- will not diminish any time soon. And when kids become homeless, their education suffers immensely. Huge cuts in education budgets (mean) our homeless children are less and less likely to get any kind of education. How can a seven-year-old child learn when she has not slept the night before because she's scared and hungry and doesn't know where she'll sleep that night? How can we expect a 15-year-old to care about graduating when he has to study in a closet because the shelter lights have been turned off?
4 What is more important for a child than learning? What is more important for a country than educated citizens? Our students persevere every day against seemingly insurmountable odds. Despite desperate living conditions, hunger and other unimaginable challenges, our students show us courage, resilience and determination in their pursuit of education. We should show them the same courage.
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After reading, you will discuss the text in small groups, keeping the overall writing prompt as a basis for your discussion.
1. Share what you annotated - where is unequal education happening and what are the
consequences?
2. Where in the story did the authors 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?
Finally, you will independently plan your writing and complete the argument writing task. Revise as necessary.
Remember… your question is:
Why is equal education important to nations and their citizens?
*Cite evidence from at least two of the texts as well as your own experiences to form your argument.
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