David Harnasch / 02.05.2007 / 10:25 / 0 / Seite ausdrucken

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William Dalrymple inspizierte für den New Statesman Schulen in Pakistan und macht einen Hoffnungsschimmer für die dortige Jugend aus:

Yet, despite these awesome difficulties, no problem in Pakistan casts such a long shadow over its future as the abject failure of the government to educate more than a fraction of its own people: at the moment a mere 1.8 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP is spent on government schools. The statistics are dreadful: 15 per cent of these government schools are without a proper building; 52 per cent without a boundary wall; 40 per cent without water; 71 per cent without electricity. There is frequent absenteeism of teachers; indeed, many of these schools are empty ruins or exist only on paper.
[...]
The virtual collapse of government schooling has meant that many of the poorest people who wish to enhance their children’s hope of advancing themselves have no option but to place them in the madrasa system, where they are guaranteed an ultra-conservative and outdated but none the less free education, often subsidised by religious endowments provided by the Wahhabi Saudis.

Altogether there are now an estimated 800,000 to one million students enrolled in Pakistan’s madrasas: an entire free Islamic education system existing parallel to the increasingly moribund state sector. Though the link between the madrasas and al-Qaeda is often exaggerated - the overwhelming majority of the sophisticated international Salafi jihadis associated with Osama Bin Laden’s group are middle-class and were well educated at western-style colleges - it is true that madrasa students have been closely involved in both the rise of the Taliban and the growth of sectarian violence within Pakistan and Afghanistan; it is also true that the education provided by many madrasas is often wholly inadequate to prepare or equip children for modern life in a civil society.

There is, however, one bright glimmer of hope in this depressingly dark situation. In 1995, a group of Karachi-based Pakistani businessmen founded a new charity called The Citizens Foundation, or TCF, with the simple aim of taking Pakistan’s children off the streets and providing them with a quality, secular education at heavily subsidised prices. Since then the charity has grown at the most remarkable rate: TCF now has 311 purpose-built schools located in Pakistan’s most miserable slums and most underdeveloped rural areas, and a new one opens every single week. Each morning, around 40,000 boys and girls enter the gates of a TCF school somewhere in Pakistan.

The TCF schools I have visited are remarkable: in contrast to the government-run primaries, which usually resemble little more than cattle pens, TCF schools are beautifully planned two-storey structures built in brick, with attractive courtyards and verandas. Each has six classrooms, a library, an art room and washrooms with running water; the secondary schools have, in addition, science and computer rooms. The quality of teaching is surprisingly high, and TCF has its own purpose-built teacher-training institute where the staff - entirely made up of women, in order to encourage parents to enrol their girls - receive a thorough grounding in education. Since it was opened in 1997, more than 2,400 trained teachers have emerged from the institute and taken up positions in TCF schools.

The quality of teaching provided to the children in many cases equals that of Pakistan’s smartest private schools; yet the kids who enrol are from the very poorest and most deprived families. Although all children have to pay fees of a minimum of ten Pakistani rupees a month, TCF’s adjustable fee structure gives the poorest children access to an education, uniforms and school books at heavily subsidised rates - up to 95 per cent of fees - putting a top-quality edu cation within the reach of the poor for the first time. Already the first batch of graduates from the TCF system has been winning scholarships to Pakistan’s leading colleges.

It costs just £10 a month to educate a child at a TCF school; £6,000 will keep an entire school running for a year. TCF is probably the most dynamic, impressive and well-run south Asian charity I have come across in 20 years of writing about the subcontinent. Yet, given Pakistan’s now central geopolitical role, and the huge stake that the west has in seeing Pakistan surviving as a moderate and potentially democratic country, it is an NGO that we need to support almost as much out of self-interest as charity.

Donations can be sent to: The Friends of the Citizens Foundation, 9 Camden Road, London E11 2JP. The TCF website is http://www.thecitizensfoundation.org

 

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