A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report describes underground schools in Afghanistan where girls pursue schooling that is officially denied to them by the Taliban. It’s an outrageous prospect, right on the surface: A regime threatened by girls with 7th-grade educations? How fragile they must be.
■ It’s nothing new for a regime to deny education for the purpose of keeping a people down: The British occupiers kept Irish Catholic children out of school for so long that the Irish developed underground “hedge schools” to fight back. Americans living under enslavement were infamously denied educational opportunities, and the work that Booker T. Washington and others undertook to reverse the damage was one of the most honorable efforts of his time.
■ It seems not to take very long for people to begin taking education for granted. Kids who benefit from compulsory public education often resent having to go. Community members gripe about paying the taxes to send “other people’s kids” to school. Teachers complain about expectations and go about featherbedding or hiding low-quality work behind tenure protections. Not all, of course, but examples of each are easy to find.
■ We shouldn’t value education only in proportion to the degree it is officially denied. Scholarly pursuits should be almost sacred, with eager pupils, supportive communities, and educators who are fanatical about self-improvement. Not solely because educational opportunities are vital to lots of very practical outcomes (which they are), but because true human flourishing depends upon it.