|
══════════════════【立報】═══════════════════ |
| 教 育 專 題 深 入 報 導《2006-09-29》 |
| 本期內容 | |
| ◎國際專題：阿富汗學校 拚死教育孩童 | |
| ◎不懼炮火 伊拉克小學開課 | |
| ◎吾思吾師 找回教師熱情與尊嚴徵文比賽 | |
| 國際專題：阿富汗學校 拚死教育孩童 | |
| 策劃、編譯■唐澄暐、侯美如 | |
|
在阿富汗一間小而透光的客廳裡，20個小女孩坐在簡陋的草蓆上，依樣畫著黑板上的花朵。在裡面更暗的房間，15個稍大一些的女孩背誦一小段古蘭經，朗讀出聲。樓上則是一整班青少女，避開外人的眼目。 這間泥牆家庭學校的地點是機密。這裡的學生包括5個曾在附近其他家庭學校唸書的女孩，3個月前遭到縱火。家庭教室的存在就是直接向反政府暴動者的挑戰，這些暴動者過去一年攻擊了無數阿富汗學校，尤其是教育女孩子的學校。 為了讓女孩得到持續教育，阿富汗中部瓦達克省舍卡巴區的許多鄉村，都開始開設家庭學校，儘管有安全警戒，許多學校仍遭到攻擊。「我們很害怕。所有的家庭學校都在害怕。我聽到狗叫就不開門，跑到屋頂上去看是誰在那邊。」眾多學校的創辦者穆罕默德‧蘇利曼說。 90年代以降，近10年的內戰與宗教鎮壓造成阿富汗的教育停滯不前。許多教師逃離祖國，眾多中產階級讓子女在國外就學。至於那些遺留下來的，尤其是在農村的孩子，根本無法接受義務教育，其中以女孩的情形最糟。在某些地區，女性識字率低於1％。今日，多數阿富汗人渴望補償失去的光陰而汲汲向學。但女孩的義務教育在許多農村地區仍引起爭議，特別是在她們青春期開始禁止與男孩交往之後。 在奮力重生的阿富汗，兒童教育一度大放異彩。禁止女孩上學的極端伊斯蘭政權塔利班下台的兩年內，官方宣稱510萬孩童註冊入學，不分性別。這裡面還包括聯合國兒童基金會支持的上百間鄉村帳篷學校。現在，由於塔利班暴動者攻擊北約和美國部隊，許多省份的教育活動已經停滯。總統卡札依本週在紐約演講中表示，由於言語威脅和暴力攻擊，約20萬阿富汗兒童今年被迫離開學校。 聯合國兒童基金會指出，今年1月至8月間，31個省份共發生了106起針對學校的威脅或攻擊事件。其中包括1次火箭攻擊，11次爆裂物，50次縱火和37次威脅。在遭受塔利班強烈攻擊的南方4省，基金會表示，748個學校中有半數停止運作。 在南部的坎達哈省，5個區的學校已經全部關門。暴動者從窗戶丟入手榴彈，威脅要對上學的女孩潑酸。在鄰近的哈爾曼德省，一位高中校長慘遭斬首，一位教師被摩托車上的槍手射殺，另有5、6間學校遭到焚毀；該省3個區的學校全部停課。在北方省份，塔利班威脅較輕，部落習俗較能接受現代觀念，許多社區歡迎外國為女孩興建學校。 其中一個社區是帕爾汪省的小村莫來，一個有許多急流和綠色梯田，蒼翠但窮困的地區。今年暑假，美軍在莫來蓋了一間容納3百人，有8間教室的小學，是當地的首創。最近參訪的記者表示，每間教室的學生都說他們是家裡第一個接受義務教育的女生。「仍然有少數家長不讓女兒來上學，但我們會繼續溝通直到令他們滿意。」25歲的教師瑪莫德‧阿古表示。「這裡什麼都缺，鋪路、電力、深井、診所。但學校是第一優先。」 11歲的古爾‧卡納姆說，她的父母是農人，並不識字，但她希望有一天能成為醫生。10歲的那奇亞以帕施圖（Pashto，阿富汗主要用語）朗誦關於自然的詩歌，緊張卻毫不停頓。她說，她以前都只有在家學過閱讀，卻從來沒上過學。「過去，我們只坐在沙土中」，她說。「現在我們有了桌椅和屋頂。這樣好多了。」 在遙遠而崎嶇的西北省份，國際非營利組織「拯救孩童」長期與教育單位緊密合作，為女孩推廣教育。田野工作者發起出租活動圖書館，並與家長討論女孩上學、（相對地）晚婚少子的好處。「每一個阿富汗的孩子都受到戰亂的影響，但你仍然要試著去教育他們，不能就這樣停下來。」拯救孩童阿富汗分部的主任雷斯利‧威爾森表示。她表示，在沙爾波省，在學的女孩比3年前成長了3倍。「仍然只是九牛一毛，但會繼續成長。」 在瓦達克省，主要高速公路上擠滿了往返一所大型高中的腳踏車男孩。但學校表示，這不代表他們安全無虞。在一個隱藏於棕色岩丘的小村，唯一的男子學校6個月前遭到炸彈攻擊而嚴重損毀，教師表示，一些學生已不再出席。「是早上3點發生的」，46歲的數學老師席葉‧哈珊表示。「我們逃跑的時候，玻璃全都震碎了，書頁散落在地上，包括我們神聖的古蘭經。」 「如果我們的人民無法接受教育，將成為我國的災難。」哈珊說，「我們眼見其他國家如何向前邁進，而我們只能遠遠落後。」家庭學校的蘇利曼身兼男子高中校長，他帶領媒體參觀許多教導女孩帕施圖語、伊斯蘭教、美術與數學的家庭學校。「有一次我晚了點進村，3個塔利班向我走來，警告我不許再教育女孩。」蘇利曼說：「我告訴他們，古蘭經說女孩應像男孩一樣受教育，而我的學校教年輕女孩背誦古蘭經，每天還祈禱5次。他們似乎被說服，就走了。」 In a small, sunlit parlor last week, 20 little girls seated on rush mats sketched a flower drawn on the blackboard. In a darker interior room, 15 slightly older girls memorized passages from the Koran, reciting aloud. Upstairs was a class of teenage girls, hidden from public view. The location of the mud-walled home school is semi-secret. Its students include five girls who once attended another home school nearby that was torched three months ago. The very exis-tence of home-based classes is a direct challenge to anti-gov-ernment insurgents who have attacked dozens of schools across Afghanistan in the past year, especially those that teach girls. "We are scared. All the home schools are scared. If I even hear a dog bark, I don't open the gate. I go up on the roof to see who is there," said Mohammed Sulieman, 49, who operates home schools for girls in several villages in the Sheikhabad district of Wardak province. Children's education was once touted as an exceptional success in this struggling new democracy. Within two years of the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement that banned girls' education and emphasized Islamic studies for boys, officials boasted that 5.1 million children of both sexes were en-rolled in public schools. These included hundreds of village tent-schools erected by UNICEF. Now, that positive tide has come to a halt in several provinces where Taliban insurgents are aggressively battling NATO and U.S. troops, and it has slowed dramatically in many other parts of the country. President Hamid Karzai told audiences in New York this week that about 200,000 Afghan children had been forced out of school this year by threats and physical attacks. According to UNICEF, 106 attacks or threats against schools occurred from January to August, with incidents in 31 Afghan provinces. They included one missile attack, 11 explosions, 50 arsons and 37 threats. In the four southern provinces under seri-ous assault by Taliban forces, UNICEF said, nearly half of the 748 schools have stopped operating. In the southern province of Kandahar, all schools are now closed in five districts. Attackers have thrown hand grenades through school windows and threatened to throw acid on girls who attend school. In neighboring Helmand province, a high school principal was beheaded, a teacher was killed by gunmen on motorbikes, and half a dozen schools were burned by arson-ists. Three districts in the province have closed all their schools. During the 1990s, a decade of civil conflict and religious re-pression, education stagnated across Afghanistan. Many teachers fled the country, and many middle-class families educated their children abroad. For those who remained behind, especially in rural areas, public education became virtually inaccessible, espe-cially for girls. In some areas, female literacy fell to less than 1 percent. Today, most Afghans appear eager to make up for lost time. Their thirst for knowledge is strong, although public education remains controversial for girls in many rural areas, especially once they reach puberty and are barred by custom from mixing so-cially with boys. In northern provinces, where the Taliban threat is minimal and tribal customs tend to be more modern, many communities have welcomed foreign offers to build schools for girls. One such community is the tiny village of Mollai in Parwan province, a lush but impoverished region of rushing streams and green, terraced fields. This summer, the U.S. Army built an eight-room elementary school for 300 girls in Mollai - the first ever in the area. During a recent visit by a reporter to the third-grade class, every student in the room said she was the first girl in her family to attend public school. "There are still a few parents who don't want their daughters to come, but we keep talking to them until we satisfy them," said the teacher, Mahmad Agul, 25. "We lack everything here - paved roads, electrical power, deep wells, clinics. But this school was our highest priority." Gul Khanum, 11, said her parents were farmers who could not read, but that she hoped one day to become a doctor. Nazia, 10, stood to recite in Pashto a poem about nature, speaking nervously but without a hitch. Afterward, she said she had learned to read at home but had not attended school before. "Before, we were just sitting in the dust," she said. "Now we have desks and chairs and a roof. This is much better." In the remote and rugged northwest provinces, the interna-tional nonprofit agency Save the Children has been working closely with education officials to promote schooling for girls. Its field workers sponsor mobile lending libraries and meet with parents to talk about the benefits of having girls stay in school, delay marriage and produce fewer children. "Every kid in Afghanistan has been affected by conflict, but you still have to try and educate them. It can't just stop," said Leslie Wilson, who directs the Afghan office of Save the Chil-dren. In Sar-e Pol province, she said, there are three times more girls in school than there were three years ago. "It's still a drop in the bucket, but it's progress," she said. In the central province of Wardak, the main highway was crowded last week with boys on bicycles traveling back and forth to a large high school. But school officials said not even they were safe from attack now. In one village hidden among the brown, rocky hills, the only boys' school was heavily damaged by a bomb six months ago, and teachers said some students had stopped attending. "It happened at three in the morning," said Syed Hassan, 46, a math teacher. "When we came running, the windows were all shattered and the pages of books were scat-tered on the ground, even our holy Korans. "If our people do not get educated, it will be a disaster for our country," he said. "We see how far ahead other countries are get-ting, and we are just falling farther behind." To keep girls in class, many villages in Wardak have opened home schools, but despite security precautions, some of them have come under attack. Sulieman, who is also the headmaster of a boys' high school, took a journalist to visit several home schools where girls were studying Pashto, Islamic subjects, art and math. In one village, a three-room home school was crammed with students, but another had recently closed after being attacked by arsonists. Officials said five girls had switched to the first school but the others had stopped attending altogether. "Once I was walking late in my village, when three Taliban came along and warned me to stop educating girls," Sulieman said. "I told them the Koran says girls should be educated as well as boys, and that my school was teaching young girls to memorize the Koran and pray five times a day. They seemed convinced, and went on their way." （http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/09/24/100wir_a6afghan001.cfm） |
|
| （回目錄） | |
| 不懼炮火 伊拉克小學開課 | |
| & | |
|
對伊拉克的家長和孩子而言，開學日的緊張心情代表的可不只是對新學期的期待而已。今年6歲，正要就讀巴格達哲瓦德薩林小學一年級的阿里在開學第一天就和媽媽說：「我好害怕上課的時候會有炸彈攻擊喔。」當阿里的母親莎菲接受路透社採訪的同時，穿著藍綠色短袖扣領襯衫和牛仔褲的阿里乖乖地在旁邊聽。莎菲表示：「阿里還是很開心可以來上學，不然平常因為怕危險我都不讓他出門，即使只是走到巷口的亭子買果汁也不行。」 伊拉克的新學年在上週三（20日）開始，雖然家長都很擔心會發生爆炸攻擊，看到孩子能有擺脫老是躲在狹窄的家裡、只能暴力的恐懼慢慢消耗的機會，卻也感到欣慰。附近薩納布克小學的教師蘇艾德也和家長抱有同樣的心情：「我們深深同情那些孩子，在這樣成天有轟炸、殺人及綁架案件的環境裡，孩子要怎麼讀書？但他們想來上學，因為這是他們唯一的出口。」 伊拉克多數學校今年的就讀人數都明顯減少，其中絕大部分並都是新生，路透社表示這是因為動盪的社會環境迫使人民到處遷家、或是逃到首都避難。理所當然的，連教師也開始流動，這使得學校班級越來越大班制，往往一個班級裡塞滿了來自不同年級的孩子。 至於家長最擔憂的安全問題，學校也是束手無策。拿阿里的學校來說，校方僅有的2位保衛其中有一位正在休假，另一位則被綁架。各校也竭盡所能，伊瑪目奧賈瓦中學的奧阿米力校長就發起了一個師生安全委員會，由他們自力保衛學校，每天早上呈報在學區內發現的可疑人物或車輛。校長在新學期第一天早會的時候就說了，「你們負責唸書，我們則負責給你們安全的環境。」 但即使學生們都能安全地坐在教室裡上課，伊拉克的教室裏仍有其危機，教師們表示要把孩子留住實在太難了，因為他們很容易就分心、失去對課堂的興趣。教授地理與歷史的艾哈麥德老師指出，學生們是對什麼都好奇的青少年，一點普通小事都能吸走他們的注意力。而另一位不願透漏姓名的25歲生物老師則也漸失對工作的熱誠，她表示自己甚至不知道為什麼每天要來工作，連原先在海珊垮台後幾天很豐厚的薪水都因通貨膨脹而大縮水，現在每個月只能拿到110美元的她，或許道出了多數伊拉克教職人員的心聲：「薪水和治安問題，這一切都無法提供我們教學的動力。也許我該辭職然後待在家。」 雖然校舍在3年前已翻新，牆壁油漆卻已開始剝落，每間擠滿50人的悶熱教室裡還只有兩個小風扇，但這卻也難掩孩子們過完暑假和朋友們重逢的開心，以及對新學年的期待。14歲的壯小子馬士塔法表示，自從兩個叔叔被殺害、父親被綁票之後，母親就帶著全家從南方逃到巴格達來，「家人當然擔心我，所以他們要我放學後別和朋友閒晃，馬上回家。但是害怕卻不能阻止我繼續唸書，我在學校很開心，我不會讓治安問題影響我、或我的學業表現。」 回到哲瓦德薩林小學，另一位也叫阿里的12歲男孩正在等待下午的課開始。他理所當然地說：「死亡就在這裡，人們在這裡相繼死去。雖然如此我還是愛上學。」雖然面對無情戰火，孩子們的教育仍是刻不容緩。（路透社） "My son told me, 'Mom, I am afraid when I go to school there will be an explosion,'" sighed Iqbal Safi, bringing her six-year-old Ali to his first day at Jawad Salim primary school in central Baghdad. Ali, in a neat, turquoise, button-down short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, listened quietly by her side. "But he is so happy he is coming," she said. "Usually he has to stay in our tiny flat. It is too dangerous to let him out, even to go to the kiosk down the street and buy juice." The start of Iraq's school year was greeted with trepi-dation on Wednesday, but also joy, as parents accepted that their children might be in danger but hoped they would find relief from the boredom and fear of a city consumed by violence. "We feel sorry for the students. How will they man-age to study with all these bombings, killings and kid-nappings?" said Suaad, an Arabic language teacher at nearby Zanabuq Primary School, asking that her sur-name not be used. "But the students want to come to school, it is the only outlet left for them." Most schools have fewer pupils this year, and many of the pupils are new, a result of families moving neigh-borhoods or fleeing the capital altogether. Teachers, too, have fled, which means classes are larger, with pupils from more than one year packed into a single room, often in shifts. Few can offer any real protection from attackers. At Ali's primary school, one of two security guards was ab-sent on leave. The other had been kidnapped. Administrators do what they can. Headmaster Mo-hammed al-Amiri, 49, at the Imam al-Jawad Sec-ondary School, formed a security committee of students and teachers to report every morning on strangers and strange cars in the area. He told pupils at their first morning assembly: "You study. We will give you a secure environment." LOSING INTEREST Maintaining standards is hard. The pupils are easily distracted, said Umm Ahmed, a geography and history teacher. "The students have lost interest in study," she said. "They are teenagers, so easily affected by the general situation." A 25-year-old biology teacher who asked not to be named said she no longer knew why she came to work. Salaries, generous in the initial days after the fall of Sad-dam Hussein, have been eroded by inflation. Hers is now worth about $110 a month. "Nothing encourages us to come to work, neither the salaries nor the security situation," she said. "Maybe I'd be better off staying at home." The school was refurbished in 2003, but already the paint is flaking. Two fans blow air through a stiflingly hot classroom packed with about 50 teenagers. Still, there was a sense of expectation in the air, and unmistakable happiness as children reacquainted them-selves with friends they had not seen over the summer. Mustafa, a stout boy of 14, said he moved to the area when his family fled their home in the south of the city after two of his uncles were killed and his father was kidnapped. "Of course, my parents worry. They want me to come back home as soon as I finish class, not wander around with my friends." But fear had not stopped him from passing his exams last year, and it will not stop him now, he said. "I'm happy to be here. I don't let the security situation affect me, or my performance." Back at Jawad Salim Primary School, another boy al-so named Ali, 12, was waiting for the afternoon shift to start. "There's death out there, people are dying," he said matter-of-factly. "But despite all that I like to come to school." |
|
| （回目錄） | |
| 吾思吾師 找回教師熱情與尊嚴徵文比賽 | |
送舊迎新囉！迎接新的一年，讓我們滿懷感恩的心，感謝過去教導我們、使我們智慧增長的師長，用一千字以內的短文與大家分享溫馨感人的真人實事。全教會贊助入選者稿酬每字2元，來稿請以電子檔寄young@lihpao.co-m﹐附真實姓名﹑身份字號﹑銀行帳號。本報有權刪修來稿﹐來稿者視為同意本報集結出書時﹐不另支稿酬。 |
|
| （回目錄） | |
|
參觀立報： |
http://www.lihpao.com |
|
寫信給小編e-mail： |
fiveguys@ms19.hinet.net |
|
立報地址： |
台北縣新店市光復路43號 |
| 欲詳完整內容請訂閱立報 電話：02-86676655 傳真：02-82191213 訂報：02-86676655轉214 地址：台北縣新店市復興路43號1樓 每週一至週六出報，每份10元 |