You’ve come a long way, girl
What's happened, what's current; or what's coming ... and girls just want to have education
For somebody who don’t drive, I’ve been all around the world, some people say I’ve done alright for a girl. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh yeah, yeah.
I was fortunate to be in Pakistan for its National Day on 23 March 2002, six months after 9/11 and the evacuation of aid workers in the region. I worked in Kashmir training primary teachers in the remote region on multi-grade education – methods for teaching children of various ages in one classroom and therefore a different curriculum for each grade. I also taught radio schooling which aimed to expand the reach of remote learners to education at home.
Pakistan National Day commemorates the day in 1940 when the idea of a separate nation was conceived. Seven years later, the nation gained independence as a sovereign state.
This year, 2024, twenty-two years later, I’m evaluating a UNESCO girl’s education project and I see that remote regions still have their challenges, but there is hope. In 2002, the girls I celebrated with were 10-15 years old. Now they would be 32-37. “This girl is a woman now” – the 1969 lyrics of Gary Puckett & the Union Gap comes to mind. So does Malala Yousafzai.
In 2012, as a 15-year-old human rights advocate for girls’ education in the remote and mountainous Swat Valley in Pakistan, Malala was shot in the head while on a bus returning home after sitting a school exam. Two years later, she was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of seventeen. The UNESCO Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education, established in 2012, helps to expand girls’ access to education globally, especially in countries affected by conflict and natural disasters, not only in Pakistan.
In Pakistan, her fund inspired the new wave of support for girls in remote regions to bridge the gap between primary and secondary education. While many girls end their education at primary level, it has been difficult to continue into secondary education due to the lack of physical secondary schools, resources, and female teachers. The Malala Funds-in-Trust framework in Pakistan supports the training of 600 teachers in multi-grade education and activity-based learning in 19 marginalized districts. The smaller project I evaluated operated in five districts – one of them was Malala’s home district of Swat Valley – which I couldn’t visit on account of the snow.
Where are those girls of 2002 and 2012 now? I’m sure they’ve come a long way. I think of Melanie Safka’s 1971 song “Brand New Key” – also known as the roller-skate song – For somebody who don’t drive, I’ve been all around the world, some people say I’ve done alright for a girl. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh yeah, yeah.
As I spoke to a female official in the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training in Pakistan, a woman from a remote and rugged region, we engaged in an interesting discussion on girls’ education, the promotion of female teachers, and the long road to signs of success. “Look at me, I’m proof of that,” she said. Indeed, she had come a long way. She could have been one of those young girls back in 2002.
I finish with another song: Kate & Anna McGarrigle’s 1977 song “Come a Long Way” – well, we’ve come a long way since we last shook hands, still got a long way to go; couldn’t see the flowers when we last shook hands, couldn’t see the flowers on account of the snow.
I think the snow is melting, and the flowers are blooming.