So I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. This book details the life of Greg Mortenson who, in the past 20-odd years, has constructed over 40 schools in rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I am completely blown away by this book. I can hardly believe that the accounts I was reading were actually real. The fact that this man rallied for years and years to raise funds for promoting education (especially the education of girls) in one of the harshest regions of the world is one of the most heroic things I have ever heard.
One of the main tenets that Mortenson advocates is that education is the key to ending terrorism. This is so incredibly true. The children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, living in severe poverty, are led to madrassas, Taliban-funded schools where they learn an extremist form of Islam that promotes hatred towards Westerners. When students graduate from these schools, they are offered a paltry sum and the chance to join the Taliban. Faced with few or no other options, these students join this terrorist group.
Mortenson states that "More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments." How completely heart-breaking that in this day and age, where in so many parts of the world tons of information can be called upon with the click of a button, there are children who do not know how to read or how to write, and perhaps they never will.
It's even more astounding when you consider that the second of the 8 Millenium Development Goals (set in 2001 as targets for the UN member states) reads as such:
Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
In Stephen Lewis' book Race Against Time, he notes that in so many of his encounters to African countries, the overwhelming desire of children is that of an education! And yet later on in the same book he states that "In 2005, the world will pass the trillion-dollar mark in the expenditure, annually, in arms. We're fighting for $50 billion annually for foreign aid for Africa: the military totally outstrips human need by 20 to 1. Can someone please explain to me our contemporary balance of values?"
And Mortenson confirms this when he says "I'm no military expert...And these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"
As I mentioned earlier, the children of Central Asia are being educated in madrassas funded by leaders from Saudi Arabia. Mortenson describes how they land in Pakistan with suitcases full of money for the purpose of building these schools. The United States decision to fund an army to blow other countries to bits (inflicting major casualties on civilians, too, by the way!) will not solve anything in the long run. The people of Central Asia do not hate all Americans, and Three Cups of Tea is a clear testament to that!
But for everyone who still believes that the war on terror will be won by blasting as many holes into Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. as possible, then you simply must read Three Cups of Tea and Race Against Time. These two books are truly an eye-opener into the reality that education can provide the way to an incredibly brighter future - much brighter than the fading glow of a Tomahawk missile explosion against the dark night sky of Central Asia.
