In her life story, [Malala] is not standing up for the right to government education at all. In fact, she’s scathing about government education: it means ‘learning by rote’ and pupils not questioning teachers. It means high teacher absenteeism and abuse from government teachers, who, reluctantly posted to remote schools, ‘make a deal with their colleagues so that only one of them has to go to work each day’; on their unwilling days in school, ‘All they do is keep the children quiet with a long stick as they cannot imagine education will be any use to them.’ She’s surely not fighting for the right of children to an education like that.
But if not government education, what is she standing for? In fact, Malala’s life story shows her standing up for the right to private education.
I vilken miljö har Malala skolats till att bli en sådan fantastisk förebild som hon är? Vad finns det för miljöer i ett kvinoförtryckande land som Pakistan, där en så ung flicka tillåts blomstra? En privat lågkostnadsskola, förstås. Skolforskaren James Tooley, som bland annat skrivit boken The Beautiful Tree, skriver viktigt om detta i the Spectator, och kommenterar på Facebook:
Malala – as soon as I heard the terrible things that had happened to her, I thought: ’I bet she went to a low-cost private school’. It took a while to find out, but it’s true. Her father is an educational entrepreneur, founder of a chain of low-cost private schools. But why has no-one else noticed this? Search the websites of all those who’ve jumped on the Malala bandwagon – ActionAid, Oxfam, Gordon Brown, etc. – and there’s no mention anywhere of her low-cost private school heritage.
I see her and her father as the new champions of all I’ve been fighting for.
Mer om detta när Tooleys kollega Pauline Dixon besöker Sverige på Frivärlds inbjudan 19-21 november.
