Why can't we export education?

The Associated Press circulated this short piece yesterday:

KABUL, Afghanistan – At least 85 students and teachers were killed last year in attacks blamed on insurgents who oppose education for girls and teaching boys anything but religion, Afghanistan’s education minister said Sunday.

Insurgents also burned down 187 schools, while 350 closed because of security concerns, Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar said.

“The enemy of our nation … has targeted our education system through destruction and inhumanity,” Atmar told thousands of students at a stadium in Kabul in a speech marking Education Day. Militants are “killing our innocent teachers and students and burning our schools.”

The number of students attending school has skyrocketed since the 2001 fall of the Taliban regime, which banned girls from school and boys from studying anything other than Islam.

But more than half of Afghan children still lack the means to go to school, while 60 percent of those enrolled “study under tents, in the shade of walls and trees or in some cases, under the hot sun,” Atmar said.

About 5.4 million students were enrolled in school last year, up from less than 1 million during Taliban rule. Thirty-five percent of those enrolled were girls.

New York-based Human Rights Watch reported at least 190 attacks on schools last year – up from 91 reported in 2005.

While our country seemingly has a difficult time convincing our "troubled" youth to attend class, much less graduate, in other parts of the world children, particularly girls, are literally dying for the chance to attend school, even schools which don't exist other than as a gathering on the ground, outside, with one teacher and no supplies.

The AP article specifically discusses Afghanistan, but similar stories could be written about rural poor in India, Africa, South America. Virtually anywhere you see a US-sponsored school you see chldren doing anything they can to attend. They seem to understand, perhaps instinctually, how rare this chance is for them, how brief the opportunity might last, and how valuable it could be for their future.

Which begs the question -- why are these opportunities rare and brief? Why aren't we, as a nation, doing more to make these opportunities more available?

Look at the Arab world right now -- the primary source of education available for millions of young men (and virtually no young women) without much financial means consists of the madrassas, Islamic religious schools. While some such schools do offer broader educations, others focus solely on the Koran, to the exclusion of anything else. Funding for these schools generally comes from private sources, and the students often attend free.

Why allow this to continue unchallenged? I would love to see a massive "Education Export" project, where we attempt to help subsidize placing teachers and providing materials in some of these rural areas of the world, with multi-year commitments.

The benefits could be massive, and not just a one-way street. Developing countries would stand to gain a huge amount from having an increased number of educated citizens. Increasing the number of educated women in many of these nations can only help in overcoming the traditional opposition to allowing women equal opportunities which exists in much of the 3rd World.

Coming the other way, increasing global opportunity can only help improve global markets for our economy ... but that's not the real point ...

Imagine a program like this, running all over the world for 20 years. An entire generation, or two, who learn more about how the world works while at the same time, through an almost inevitable osmosis, gaining some degree of "Westernization" through exposure to our ideas and culture. I'd much rather invest the $100 billion a year we are spending on our forces in Iraq on something like this instead.

We won't ever defeat terrorism entirely, and we certainly won't defeat it with our military exclusively. You defeat terrorism by making it in the best interests of the general populace to help you rather than the terrorists. You do it by providing opportunity.

You provide opportunity through education.