Malala Yousafzai

After the emotion of the events last week in France this is perhaps a good topic to discuss in class: Malala Yousafzai the Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.

Malala initially came to prominence when, as an 11-year-old, she wrote a diary for BBC Urdu, giving an account of how her school in Mingora town dealt with the Taliban’s 2009 edict to close girls’ schools. In October 2012 she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman for « promoting secular education ». She recovered from the attack and was even more determined to continue her campaign which is now worldwide. In 2014 she became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Her love for education, and her courage in standing up to the Taliban, made her an icon of bravery.

Here are a few articles and videos about Malala that can be used to illustrate several notions: myths and heros, places and forms of power and also the idea of progress.

I'm going to present the first document. It's an article from the BBC News Magazine, from 10 October 2012. It's about Malala, a Pakistanese girl.

FACT : The Taliban issued an edict banning all girls from School. More than half of the class stopped attending school (11 left out 27). Militants destroyed 150 schools in 2008, and her school closed down in 2009.

She started a blog in order to describe what her life was like, living under Taliban rule in the north west of Pakistan. She also wanted to speak out, and to let everybody know about the hardships she was going through, therefore she wrote anonymously, otherwise she would have been killed immediately.

She mainly wrote about the conditions of education in her area and her fear of being killed by the Taliban if she went an attending school. She also feared the closure of her school, which happened anyway in January 2009.

She objects to the Taliban's prohibition of female education and their destruction of schools. It makes her feel angry as she is offended by such an unfair edict. Although she was scared to get killed at the time, she decided that she should speak out to stand up for this basic right : Education for everyone.

She probably believes in education as a gate to freedom and self-fulfiillment which is why the Taliban and their Sharia banned it. She cannot comply to that rule stating that girls shouldn't be educated.

It's no allow at all by the Sharia writing a blog. According the BBC article, Malala has taken huge risks. She has put her life into danger when she decided to challenge the Taliban laws and fights for the right of girls to be educated.

Her fight for education equality reveals how important Education is for her. She deeply thinks that a country which wants to progress or emerge is a country where boys and girls are given the same education opportunities.

Society can only evolve if girls are granted the same rights to knowledge. The lack of education for girls enables the Taliban to go on imposing an unfair model of society, where women will still oppressed and persecuted and where men will hold on to their ruling power and priviledges. It will only widen the gender gap. Education is an opening to sharing equal power between males and females. Malala has understood quite early that Education is power and this power is what frightens the Taliban. Therefore ther

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