美国国家公共电台 NPR--Secret schools enable Afghanistan's teen girls to skirt Taliban's education ban

Secret schools enable Afghanistan's teen girls to skirt Taliban's education ban

Transcript¹

KABUL, Afghanistan – Inside a small room in a house on Kabul's outskirts², about ten teenage girls are defying their Taliban rulers who have banned them from attending secondary school. "Let's learn," one student slowly reads to another as they review English lessons from a textbook. "Learn the words: Yellow, blue, red, green."

The girls attend a secret school run by a young woman barely older than her students, 21-year-old Nazanin, whose lavender headscarf matched her nail polish on the day we visited.

"When the Taliban said girls can't go to secondary school anymore, I thought to myself, 'what can I do?'," she tells NPR. "How can I raise the morale³ of the girls around me?" She and the young students requested they only be referred to by their first names, to avoid being identified by Taliban officials.

It's been nearly a year since the Taliban seized power and stopped some 850,000 Afghan girls from attending secondary school, according to UNICEF figures. The regime had promised to allow girls to return on March 23. But it appears a minority of senior hardliners had a change of heart. Teenage girls arrived to their old classrooms only to be sent home again, many in tears.

The Taliban have been pressured to reverse their decision by the international community, Afghan women, girls — even prominent Afghan clerics known for their loyalty⁴ to the Taliban. An Education Ministry⁵ spokesman tells NPR they're ready to open those schools whenever their leadership says they can. But hopes are slim. At a nationwide conference of Taliban loyalist clerics and traders that took place from June 30 to July 2, local media reported that girls education was only mentioned by two of the 3,000 male attendees. The communique issued at the gathering's end called on the international community to recognize the Taliban administration but contained only a vague reference to education.

Secret schools and loopholes

Many Afghan girls aren't waiting for the Taliban government to change their minds. Nor are their teachers.

In Kabul, the rural province of Parwan and the western city of Herat alike, women are running secret schools like Nazanin's. They're also finding loopholes around the Taliban's ban on girls attending secondary education, by operating girls madrassas — religious schools — or tutoring centers that essentially⁶ replicate⁷ high school courses.

"The fact that people have found all of these different ways to try to work around the Taliban ban is an indication of how desperately⁸ people want education for themselves, for their daughters, for the for the girls in their families," says Heather Barr, who for Human Rights Watch closely tracks violations⁹ against women and girls in Afghanistan.

While some governments may let poor girls fall through the cracks of the school system or have educational or general policies that discriminate¹⁰ against girls, only Afghanistan has banned girls' secondary education outright¹¹, she says. "The Taliban should be deeply ashamed that they've made Afghanistan the only country in the world that's denying girls access to education based on their gender¹²."

After the Taliban reneged on their promise to let girls return to secondary school in late March, Nazanin decided¹³ to open her small school. Those close to her pitched in. She described her thinking at the time: "If we follow the Taliban, we'd just stay home. No. We have to do something."

Her family helped transform a spare room in their house and painted it a warm yellow. Her grandmother donated a rug. Friends handed over books. Nazanin teaches grades seven and eight as well as art. Her cousin teaches the older grades. A friend handles the English class.

Word of mouth has filtered across the alleyways in Nazanin's hardscrabble, working-class area. Her class is filled with students like 14-year-old Leila.

Leila pulls out a black pen from her Barbie-themed pencil case, opens her notebook and hunches¹⁴ over the low table she shares with the other girls. She copies English sentences off the whiteboard. "She is pretty," she whispers as she writes. "Our classroom is hot."

The Taliban's ban is just the latest barrier to Leila's education. During the pandemic, Leila missed a year of schooling¹⁵. Last year, after she returned, tragedy struck: militants¹⁶ targeted teenage girls at her school, Sayed al-Shuhada, as they were streaming out of the gate, detonating a vehicle rigged with explosives that killed more than 80.

Leila was still inside her school when the attack occurred, but she lost many of her friends. And yet she returned three days later, expecting to resume studies. The school hadn't even reopened. Weeks later, her parents pulled her out, fearing another attack. Then, the Taliban swept to power.

Now, Leila walks to her secret school from her house nearby.

To avoid suspicion, she tucks her notebooks behind whatever novel she's borrowed from Nazanin's modest book collection. This week, it's a book of Persian poetry. The girls think if they're seen reading, that's okay. But studying — that could get them into trouble.

Even the Taliban isn't 100% opposed to schooling for teen girls

The Taliban, as a group, don't all agree on banning girls' secondary education. One senior Taliban bureaucrat¹⁷ requested anonymity¹⁸ to explain the ban to NPR because of the subject's sensitivity. He says the Taliban's hardcore loyalists demanded the ban in accordance with the conservative tradition that girls should stay home.

There are exceptions: The ban isn't applied¹⁹ in a handful of provinces where community leaders, typically men, voice support for girls' education.

The ban, paradoxically enough, does not apply to colleges either.

That has led to a surreal situation in Afghanistan where teenage girls must stay home, but a young woman lucky enough to have been in college when the Taliban seized power can still legally pursue her degree. A lack of professors to teach the women alongside strict dress codes appears to have kept many college-age women home, however.

The Taliban official says that in places where the ban is in effect, girls and their families can pay to attend privately²⁰ run tutoring centers, where students typically go to improve their grades.

It's not clear how many Afghan girls are in secret schools or otherwise finding ways to educate themselves, but it almost certain that it is only a fraction of the some 850,000 girls who live in parts of Afghanistan where secondary schools have closed. According to UNICEF figures from 2019, which was the last time a school census²¹ was conducted, there were 1.1 million girls in secondary school. Some 250,000 of those girls live in provinces where secondary schools are still operational.

In Kabul, some of the luckiest girls end up in a basement on a quiet Kabul street, where 34-year-old Zainab set up a tutoring center in April to keep girls learning. She conducts online language lessons for Afghans abroad to raise money and is seeking external sponsors as well. "We cover secondary school subjects. We even hired teachers who lost their jobs. It's all free. I don't [want] the girls to miss out on an education."

Zainab says Taliban authorities have informally allowed her to run the center, provided the girls obey strict dress codes. And they do: The teenagers filter in wearing black robes, headscarves and face masks.

The center offers classes for English and Quran memorization. The most popular course prepares girls for the college admissions test. It's unclear, however, if the Taliban will allow new female college entrants.

One top achieving student at Zainab's center, 17-year-old Sahar, says her current situation is not like school.

She's meant to be in grade 11. She goes to three different tutoring centers to round out her education. She leaves home at 6 a.m. each morning and races between classes. She worries her bag, filled with books, might attract hostility²². "I get really scared when the Taliban guys see me. I change my routes," she says.

Some days, Sahar says, her morale collapses²³. "I've always wanted to be a doctor and until the Taliban took over, I was getting top marks. Now I've got no chance. She and her mother cry together sometimes, Sahar says, "because our future is so dark."

It's a deep sadness she says her mother shares. Because when the Taliban were last in power, her mother was a teenager. And she couldn't attend school either.

Additional reporting by Khwaga Ghani from California.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

• Our car broke down on the outskirts of the city.我们的汽车在市郊出了故障。
• They mostly live on the outskirts of a town.他们大多住在近郊。

3 morale   

n.道德准则，士气，斗志

参考例句：

• The morale of the enemy troops is sinking lower every day.敌军的士气日益低落。
• He tried to bolster up their morale.他尽力鼓舞他们的士气。

4 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

5 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

6 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

7 replicate   

v.折叠，复制，模写；n.同样的样品；adj.转折的

参考例句：

• The DNA of chromatin must replicate before cell division.染色质DNA在细胞分裂之前必须复制。
• It is also easy to replicate,as the next subsection explains.就像下一个小节详细说明的那样，它还可以被轻易的复制。

8 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

9 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。

10 discriminate   

v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待

参考例句：

• You must learn to discriminate between facts and opinions.你必须学会把事实和看法区分出来。
• They can discriminate hundreds of colours.他们能分辨上百种颜色。

11 outright   

adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的

参考例句：

• If you have a complaint you should tell me outright.如果你有不满意的事，你应该直率地对我说。
• You should persuade her to marry you outright.你应该彻底劝服她嫁给你。

12 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

13 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

14 hunches   

预感，直觉( hunch的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A technical sergeant hunches in a cubicle. 一位技术军士在一间小屋里弯腰坐着。
• We often test our hunches on each other. 我们经常互相检验我们的第六感觉。

15 schooling   

n.教育；正规学校教育

参考例句：

• A child's access to schooling varies greatly from area to area.孩子获得学校教育的机会因地区不同而大相径庭。
• Backward children need a special kind of schooling.天赋差的孩子需要特殊的教育。

16 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

17 bureaucrat   

n. 官僚作风的人，官僚，官僚政治论者

参考例句：

• He was just another faceless bureaucrat.他只不过是一个典型呆板的官员。
• The economy is still controlled by bureaucrats.经济依然被官僚们所掌控。

18 anonymity   

n.the condition of being anonymous

参考例句：

• Names of people in the book were changed to preserve anonymity. 为了姓名保密，书中的人用的都是化名。
• Our company promises to preserve the anonymity of all its clients. 我们公司承诺不公开客户的姓名。

19 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

20 privately   

adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地

参考例句：

• Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
• The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。

21 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

22 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

23 collapses   

折叠( collapse的第三人称单数 )； 倒塌； 崩溃； （尤指工作劳累后）坐下

参考例句：

• This bridge table collapses. 这张桥牌桌子能折叠。
• Once Russia collapses, the last chance to stop Hitler will be gone. 一旦俄国垮台，抑止希特勒的最后机会就没有了。