"Education in Afghanistan," a
version of this was published in Encylopeadia Iranica, volume VIII, Fascicle 3, Mazda Publishers, 1998, pp. 237-241.
version of this was published in Encylopeadia Iranica, volume VIII, Fascicle 3, Mazda Publishers, 1998, pp. 237-241.Afghans like other people have always had some form of education. Their archeological artifacts, monuments and traditions point to the existence of various schools of thought on education. Formal education was established primarily through the local population’s interactions with different groups who came as merchants or marching armies into the area.
Brahman monks (1500-900 B. C) taught in eastern and northern part of the country. In the western parts Avestic teachings (600-400 B. C.) explained the new religion. Buddhism (500 BC) brought its own curriculum and methods of teaching (Zaheer and `Ailmi, pp. 1-3). From this time on until the conversion of the local people to Islam (8th century) education existed informally and sporadically in the area.
During the Golden Age of Islam (8-12 centuries) the great madaris, the higher educational organizations, were in Bukhara and Baghdad not in the area constituting the present day Afghanistan. However, vigorous masjid schools as the primary educational cycle inculcating the Islamic faith, were wide spread. These schools taught reading, writing, and the rituals. Children, often, learned the rituals with the help of easy to remember poetry. Later some of these masjid schools were feeders to the madaris of the area.
Sometimes parts of the present day Afghanistan constituted parts of the great empires such the Abbasid, the Samanid, the Ghaznavid and the Saljuq. A curriculum of a formal madrasah education of the Abbasid included jurisprudence, exegesis and tradition; literary studies, philology, composition, reading, syntax, rhetoric, prosody, history, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, algebra, music, politics, ethic, domestic economy, logic, dialectic, dogmatic, theology, metaphysics, natural science, medicine, chemistry, surveying, veterinary, agriculture, phrenology, dream interpretation, astrology and magic (Nakosteen, pp. 52- 54).
Within the present boundaries of the country some higher educational organizations developed during the Samanid and the Saljuq eras. Education also flourished during the rule of the Kurts of Herat [643/1264-783/1404] following the holocaust of the Mongol invasion (Zaheer and `Ailmi, p. 8). The Timurid period (15th century) in Herat was very significant in the development of education, the arts, and the literature (Zaheer and `Ailmi, p. 11). This renaissance followed the cataclysm brought by Amir Timur. Following were some of the higher educational establishments that were founded and endowed in Herat by the end of the Timurid era: Madrasa-ye Nizammiya, endowed by Nizam al Mulk, Madrasa va Khanaqa-ye Mirza Shahrukh, Madrasa va Khanaqah-ye Khawajah Abdullah Ansari, Madrasah-ye Fassiyah founded by Fasihuddin Muhammed Nizami, Madrasa-ye Ikhlasiyah, Madrasa-ye Chahar Minar founded by Sultan Begum, Madrasa-ye Ghiyassiyah, Madrasa-ye Sultani (Zaheer and `Ailmi, p. 12). However, in all of these activities education was neither universal nor compulsory.
By the end of the 19th century the masjid schools lost their breadth and rigor and the madraris their universal curricula. From the Timurid time to the end of the 19th century (a period of almost five hundred years) the land saw many invasions and countless civil turmoil. No educational organization of note developed. Later when the present day Afghanistan was emerging the internecine wars of the Abdalis and then the Mohammadzai clans made sure that even a trace of education did not remain in the country (Zaheer and `Ailmi, p. 23).
Private homes and the masjids continued to be places where children learned the Islamic rituals and some writing and reading. Mullas, imams or akhunds taught in the masjids. Often a female teacher, bibiatun, was looking after the education of the girls and small boys in a private house (Shorish, 1986b, p. 8). The primary level of the traditional Islamic education in the masjid schools became almost totally theological long before any modern government schools were introduced. These masjid schools gave the Afghans their sense of identity as Muslims and provided them with the fundamentals of the Islamic culture and tradition. However, the masjid schools and the madaris at this time were unsuitable for development. They were only remnants of one of the many aspects of formal Islamic learning of centuries ago.
In the cultural history of Afghanistan it is only at the time of Amir Shir Ali Khan (1863-66; 1868-79) that formal schooling is established (Zaheer and `Ailmi, p. 23). The only schools of this type were Maktab-e Harbia (the War School) in Shirpoor and the Molki va Khawanin School (mainly for members of the royal family) in Balahisar (Zaheer and `Ailmi, pp. 24-25). These government schools were versions of a mixture of traditional masjid schooling and some curricular and structural aspects of Western education. Mahmud Tarzi championed the cause of the government schools before the First World War (Tarzi, pp. 459-475).
It is not until 1901 that one sees relatively significant activities in the educational scene. The first educational undertaking of Amir Habibullah Khan (1901-1919) was the opening of eleven Dar al-Huffaz with 140 students and 14 teachers in Kabul. Gadgets of Western technology fascinated the Amir. The technology that drove the Amir also brought aspects of Western education into the country. He named the new school that he founded in 1903 as Maktab-e Habibiyah, after himself (The World Bank, p. 169). Habibiyah opened as a primary school. Later it became a ten year school composed of four years elementary (ibtada’iyah) cycle, a rushdiyah cycle (3 years) and three years of `adadiyah. The elementary branches of this school were established in six other regions of Kabul, including one for the Hindus. The Habibiyah school has been praised by many as having a great impact on the development of generations of Kabuli intellectuals. Amir Habibullah Khan opened a special classroom in Habibiyah for the aristocrats in 1919 (Ghubar, pp. 700-702).
Attached to this small education system of 700 students and fifty-five teachers was a laboratory (Bayt al-Hukm) a map and art room (Bayt al-Rasm) and a clinic (Bayt al-`Ailaj). It had a library, a warehouse and, two clerks. The Anjuman-e Ma’arif (the Education Council) consisted of four Afghans, three Turks and four Indians (Ghubar, p. 702).
In 1909 the new Herbia School (the war school) was founded. Also, in this year fifty-seven students went to Bombay to learn automobile technology. Apparently, they were the first Afghans to study abroad (Ghubar, p. 703). The first Dar al-Mu’alimin was established in 1912 to prepare teachers for elementary schools of the country (Ministry of Education, 1968, p. 6). Expatriates from India, Turkey, and later from Europe met the need for secondary school teachers.
The Third Afghan War (1919) ended in the independence of Afghanistan from England. The exuberance with which the Afghans met the new education system was without precedence. It seems that Amir Amanullah Khan (1919-1928) was committed to the social development of Afghanistan. He opened Maktab-e Masturat, the first primary school for girls in 1921 (Ministry of Education, 1968, p. 7). Later, the Women Welfare Society was founded and the first group of women was sent to study nursing in Turkey. Women had their publication, Irshad al-Naswan. Mahmud Tarzi who was Amir’s father-in-law also was an ardent supporter of the education of women. Article 68 of the first constitution (declared through a Loya Jirga, the traditional Afghan assembly of elders selected by the government) of Afghanistan made elementary education compulsory (Ghubar pp. 789-794; Tarzi, pp. 494-512).
During Amanullah Khan’s rule, besides the Habibiyah Lyc´ee, there were Aman and Amaniyah lyc´ees, and the academic type rushdiyah schools of Masturat, Ghazi, and Istiqlal. All of these schools were in Kabul and employed Indian, French, German, and the local teachers. Vocational rushdiyah schools such as Telegraf, Art, Carpentry, Construction, Languages, Agriculture, Dar al-`Oulum Arabi, Police, Music, Carpet Weaving, Architecture, Home Economics, and Tabiyah Masturat (women's health) were established in Kabul. Similar rushdiyah schools in the provinces were in Jalalabad, Qandahar, Herat, Mazar-e Shareef, and Qataghan. There was also an agriculture rushdiyah in Qandahar and a Dar al-Mu’allimin in Herat. In 1927 about 322 elementary schools enrolled about 51,000 students in the country. A few hundred students were sent to study in Germany, England, France, the former USSR, and Turkey. Apparently, the education of the Afghan children was taking place in a relatively free atmosphere at this time (Ghubar, p.792-794). Amanullah Khan’s era witnessed the transfer of most educational innovations and other social science ideas from other countries. In the following years Afghans and their expatriate consultants simply expanded on these ideas and innovations.
Judged by the reactions that forced Amir Amanullah Khan to flee the country, the reformists misread the attitudes of the people of Afghanistan. By 1924 there was a major uprising in Paktia (Ghubar, PP, 806ff). Palace intrigues, corruption in the bureaucracy, and some religious leaders' declaration of Amanullah’s reforms as un-Islamic eroded the support that the Amir had among the people (Ghubar, pp. 794ff). In a few months all the educational enterprises (among others) ended. One should question the wisdom of the rate of change in some of the Afghan institutions and values that took place during Amanullah Khan’s rule (Dupree, pp. 452-457). One should also question the slash-and-burn reactions of those opposed to the reforms. They closed the schools as well as most other new institutions. The turmoil subsided by the end of 1929 and a period of extreme anti-intellectualism followed. Some schools were reopened with some degree of reservation by the government. In 1930 there were only 13 schools, 53 teachers and 1590 students in Afghanistan (Ministry of Education, 1968, p. 12). By 1932 enrollment fell to about 1350 students. (The World Bank, p. 169) The negative impact of the civil war in 1929 cannot be overestimated.
It was the World War II that brought the reluctant government of Afghanistan in contact with the rest of the world. The education system, however, could not capture its pre-1928 vitality and rate of growth (Ministry of Education, 1968, p. 13). By 1940 there were only 324 schools with about 60,000 students (The World Bank, p. 169). In the same year the government decreed Pashto as the medium of instruction without consideration to the pedagogical advantages imbedded in teaching in the mother tongue. Dari was taught as a second language. Only when this language policy was severely criticized by a UNESCO’s mission to Afghanistan, (UNESCO, 1952, Zaheer and `Ailmi, p.131) that Dari was taught as the medium of instruction in the Dari speaking areas (The World Bank, p. 169ff). Other major linguistic minorities did not have the right to use their mother tongues as the media of instruction until the fall of the Mohammadzai clan in the Russian inspired communist coup of 1978.
Kabul University, the Pohantun, opened in 1946 although some of its departments were established earlier. From the beginning all higher educational establishment of Afghanistan was foreign assisted. Most faculties of the Pohantun had foreign language instructed media such as English, German, French Arabic, and Russian. Often the language of instruction of a faculty or a department of the University reflected the language of its donor. Kabul University consisted of faculties of Medicine (1932), Law (1938), Sciences (1942), Letters (1944), Theology (1951), Engineering (1956), Agriculture (1956), Economics (1957), Education (1962), Pharmacy (1959), Veterinary (1961), Home Economics, and Polytechnic Institute, (1967), and the Institute of Education (1954) (Mujaddadi, pp. 17-23). Later, the branch of the Faculty of Medicine in Jalalabad was promoted to a university.
In 1956 there were 762 schools in Afghanistan enrolling about 121,000 students. Of these about 111,000 (92%) were in the elementary schools. (Ministry of Education, 1968, p. 23) This is a very low proportion of the age cohort that ordinarily one expects to be in schools. The low level of enrollment reflects more the poverty of the country rather than Afghans’ attitude toward “modern” schooling. Afghans were convinced of the government schools' indispensability as means of social mobility.
Twenty years later, in 1975, about 17600 teachers with various qualifications taught about 650,000 elementary school students (including one, two, and three teacher-village schools). It was, again, a low level of enrollment in a country with an estimated population of 15 to 16 million.
In 1973-74 about 11% of Afghans aged 6 to 65+ were literate. Of this, the literacy rate for males was 18.7% and that for females was 2.8 %. (National Demographic 1975, Pp. 73-92). In the same year only 6% of the males and 1% of the females had sixth grade education. Similarly, about 2% of the males and 1% of the females were high school graduates. Right now it is doubtful that anyone knows these and similar statistics now or has accurate data on any aspects of the Afghans economic life, including education. In 1990, UNESCO reported total literacy rate of 30 % of which the rates for the males and the females were 44 % and 14 % respectively (UNESCO, 1993, p. 121). This otherwise very useful document does not explain how it reached this conclusion. The country has never had a complete national census. Politics, poverty, and wars precluded such undertakings.
As the above discussion indicates, the educational indices of Afghanistan are among the lowest in the world. These very low figures should be looked at in the context of the erosion in the quality of education brought upon in part by poverty and population growth. Population growth and the relatively higher rates of return to investment in schooling brought a great amount of pressure to bear on the government to expand educational places.
One way to cope with this pressure was the expansion of the schools through "promotion" policy. For example, the government promoted middle schools to high schools, without any pedagogical or economic reasons in early 1970’s. The "promotion" policy increased school enrollments dramatically. By 1977, however, many schools in Afghanistan had no buildings and the majority of students did not have books, chairs, or desks, and other instructional materials. To reduce the pressure on the education system and the labor market the government instituted an examination at the end of the eighth grade to “select out” students. This examination was called the concours, after similar achievement tests in France. It was initiated by a UNESCO-UNDP and Afghan Government inspired educational reform program (UNESCO, 1977).
The real aim of the concours was to prevent most children from entering the ninth grade. The resultant pool of dropouts was to be captured by the many vocational schools that were supposed to provide the necessary human resources for a network of railroads that was to be financed by the Shah of Iran. No significant funding came from Iran. No vocational schools were built and, of course, no railroads. This concours and the injustices it symbolized later became one of the battle cries of the Soviet inspired Afghan communists after April 1978 coup.
Schooling in Afghanistan was also divisive when one looks at one of its important variables- the textbook. Several major themes emerge after analyzing textbooks produced during the 1960’s and 1970’s on Afghan history, and on the Dari and Pashto languages (Shorish, 1986a).
1. The Pushtuns (Pashto speakers, the ruling linguistic group in the country) were to be emulated by all the Afghan children. Their mode of dress and the theoretical code of conduct, the Pashtunwali, were depicted as all good. Also, the deeds of famous and not so famous Pashtun rulers were exaggerated in a positive light throughout these Afghan texts. 2. Those who ruled Afghanistan, the Mohammadzai clan of the Barakzai tribe, were, according to the implicit message of these texts, above the law. 3. The glorification of pre-Islamic events and personalities and the discussions about the superiority of the West constituted the third theme of the texts. Even the former colonial masters were implicitly glorified. Children at the end of their education knew more about Europe than Asia, the history of Islam, Afghanistan’s neighbors and the minorities within the country. (Shorish, 1986a]
The structure of the Afghan society implicitly profiled in the textbooks resembled the typical pyramid for social prestige. Male Sunni Pashtuns sat at the top of the pyramid. Other male Sunnis occupied the next rank below. Next in this hierarchy came the people following the Shi’i path like the so-called Qazilbash, Parsiwal and others. Below them were a very few Pashtuns who were Shi’is. In part because Hazaras are Shi’ai and Mongoloid they were at the bottom of the pyramid (Shorish, 1986a; Dupree, p. 57).
During the War with the Russians (1978-1992) more than one-third population became refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Relatively very few refugees received any education in these countries. Some received what may be called "emergency education." In this system, children learned fundamentals of their faith and basic literacy. Some of the older children learned elementary forms of warfare and weapon maintenance. Emergency education was rationalized on the grounds that the country was at war and needed committed fighters.
The textbooks for the Afghan refugee children in Pakistan gave extensive coverage to Islam and the Muslims with the Russians as the enemy not only of the Afghans but also of the whole humanity. Unlike the texts before the 1978 coup Afghanistan as a country is not emphasized. Afghans or any particular tribe's culture, tradition and other idiosyncratic materials are omitted from these texts to the displeasure of some. (Majrooh; Shorish, 1986a)
The Afghan refugees in Iran were not as successful in getting permission to open schools for their children on regular basis as those in Pakistan. A few schools operated surreptitiously. Unlike Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran could not tolerate Afghan-run schools for the refugees on its soil. The few who could get any education could do so only by integrating into the Iranian school system. This created the usual problems that are rooted in the two schools of fiqh dominant in the two countries. As a result most Afghan refugee children in Iran remain unschooled and unwanted to this day.
The Russian atrocities in Afghanistan have added the idea of enemy in the refugees' texts that is unprecedented in the history of Islam or the Afghans. Portraying the Russians as the enemy, and believing that they are forever so, has become an item of the Afghans’ articles of faith in one of these texts (Shura, p.61).
During the war with the Russians, education inside the country could only take place in some parts of some of the urban centers controlled by the government. The military operations in the rural areas obliterated the educational organizations there. In 1992 the Afghan resistance forces (the Mujahidin) entered Kabul. Since then most schools have remained closed in Qandahar, Kabul, and the eastern parts of the country because of factional fighting among the Mujahidin.
The few schools that remained open during the War suffered the fate of Kabul University after the Afghan Mujahidin’s victory in 1992. Most of University’s buildings are destroyed by constant bombardments and rocketing by Mujahidin factions. Its laboratories, furniture, and even the electric wiring from inside the walls of its classrooms are stolen. Only the paint remains on the walls of some of its buildings. It is doubtful if the country could recover its already very low level of educational activities prior to 1978 for many years to come. However, whenever there is a moment of peace the Afghans are rebuilding their education system. In the province of Herat and the city of Mazar-e Shareef schools have started to function in spite of enormous economic constraints characteristic of a war ravaged country. There is also the emergence of higher educational organizations. Danishgah-e Herat had several functioning faculties in 1994.
This University as well as other educational institutions of Afghanistan from their inception to the present has the common educational problems that profile poverty, underdevelopment, turmoil, and dependency. Foreign nations and international organizations (< biblio >) have supported all new Afghan educational organizations, in some forms.
The origin of foreign assistance to Afghan education goes to the early years of formal schooling in the country at the end of the 19th century. Turkey and India were among the first donors. Later, the United States, France, Germany, England, Japan, and Egypt among a handful of others contributed to education by underwriting some of the expenses of some of the schools in Kabul (Ministry of Education pp. 218-258, Annex C).
Afghanistan joined the UNESCO in 1948. From this date on Afghan educational establishments were directly linked to other international educational organizations and bilaterally to various governments (Zaheer and `Ailmi, p.11) Educational expansions and developments in Afghanistan have always had correlation if not causal relationship with foreign assistance. The catastrophic destruction of Afghanistan’s various societal dimensions by the Russians and their allies cannot be remedied, even slightly, without extensive external help from the international community.
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