Afghan schoolgirls are weeping as they finish sixth grade, knowing their education is over. Under Taliban rule, they are unlikely to ever step foot in a classroom again.
My initial thought experiment on this was “could these girls migrate to the west on a visa to complete their studies and return?”, and then I went down the rabbit hole of the demographics of Afghanistan. Of a population of around 40m, 46% are under 15, which is mad! That’s potentially a lot of girls that will lose an education.
I wonder if a remote education could be the way forward? Let these girls study remotely online, assuming they have some form of internet access available, and create a worldwide visa that would allow any Afghan girl that can pass a standard entry exam to attend university. While we have no need to provide children from another country an education, this would probably be a low-cost solution, and one that I imagine many rich philanthropists would happily provide as a grant.
This solution sort of implies that the Taliban would allow it. Like the whole system over there isn’t designed to crush these women as a form of control. It’s not a lack of ability to educate them this is by design of their government.
For a visa like this to work you’d need the government and the Men of the country to be in agreement with it happening. That currently isn’t the case. Providing a visa that almost no one will be able to use even if they wanted too would not only not help but could easily be something that’s pointed to as “we’re already providing a way for them to get educated and we don’t have to do anything else.”
True, under current laws women obviously can’t travel without a man present, so it would basically mean sending a full family over, or at the very least, a parent or partner with them.
My main point of highlighting it was that it’s not a small number of people, and that the young population of Afghanistan isn’t anywhere near as small as I thought. A remote education might help, as it’s something that women can access without having a man present.
It kind of makes sense because I bet the life expectancy in Afghanistan is not very high at all, so a higher percentage of the population would tend to be younger because of that.
My initial thought experiment on this was “could these girls migrate to the west on a visa to complete their studies and return?”, and then I went down the rabbit hole of the demographics of Afghanistan. Of a population of around 40m, 46% are under 15, which is mad! That’s potentially a lot of girls that will lose an education.
I wonder if a remote education could be the way forward? Let these girls study remotely online, assuming they have some form of internet access available, and create a worldwide visa that would allow any Afghan girl that can pass a standard entry exam to attend university. While we have no need to provide children from another country an education, this would probably be a low-cost solution, and one that I imagine many rich philanthropists would happily provide as a grant.
This solution sort of implies that the Taliban would allow it. Like the whole system over there isn’t designed to crush these women as a form of control. It’s not a lack of ability to educate them this is by design of their government.
For a visa like this to work you’d need the government and the Men of the country to be in agreement with it happening. That currently isn’t the case. Providing a visa that almost no one will be able to use even if they wanted too would not only not help but could easily be something that’s pointed to as “we’re already providing a way for them to get educated and we don’t have to do anything else.”
True, under current laws women obviously can’t travel without a man present, so it would basically mean sending a full family over, or at the very least, a parent or partner with them.
My main point of highlighting it was that it’s not a small number of people, and that the young population of Afghanistan isn’t anywhere near as small as I thought. A remote education might help, as it’s something that women can access without having a man present.
It kind of makes sense because I bet the life expectancy in Afghanistan is not very high at all, so a higher percentage of the population would tend to be younger because of that.
there’s also the whole issue of, you know, not letting them in cuz they have no education or marketable skills
we don’t just let people in