A school in Afghanistan — probably the entire school.
Learning can occur almost anywhere. Some children go to great lengths to get an education, to improve their lives where they are, or to improve their chances of finding a better place to live.
I’ll wager this school has no wi-fi, no in-school suspension, few homework problems, and no difficulty with Common Core State Standards.
Afghanistan’s schools all seem to offer amazing hurdles to education, by U.S. standards. Look at these photos.
A line of girls on their way to school. In Afghanistan most of the cities have limited number of schools which are mostly far away from students home. From Everything Afghanistan
BBC featured a story on the Afghanistan schools project. Caption here: Many Afghan schools are outdoors or in makeshift shelters on barren, dusty earth. (These photos from 2009; photos by Ramon Mohamed, a teacher from Broomhill, Sheffield, England.)
Another outdoor Afghanistan classroom. Photo from BBC
2010 post from Reality of Life in Afghanistan: “Eight years since the repressive Taliban regime was overthrown, 42 per cent children still do not attend or have access to schools. (Photo: RFE/RL)”
Those of us who advocate for outdoor classrooms generally have something else in mind than these photographs from Afghanistan show.
More:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] “School in distant, difficult classrooms: Afghanistan,” Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub… […]
LikeLike
There’s that Caldicott-winning book, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, about Daniel Bowditch, the great American navigator and mathematician.
I read it in 5th grade (it’s a kids’ book), and I was struck with his determination to learn calculus so that, when he got a copy of Newton’s Principia in Latin, he learned Latin to understand the math.
Looking back, I figured he was 15 when he did that. We’re all pikers by comparison.
LikeLike
Oh, I agree that a determined child can get an education anywhere but they have to want to learn.
LikeLike
[…] modest departure from the occasional series on how kids get to school, and the classrooms they get to. Perhaps more accurately, it’s a series on the struggles children face to get to […]
LikeLike
[…] Afghanistan classroom […]
LikeLike
[…] Speaking of books, this is what happens when two administrations in a row ignore David Petraeus’s book on counter-insurgency. Particularly the importance of other governmental agencies and specialties be engaged in rebuilding and enriching the country in question. […]
LikeLike