Unsurprisingly, I have always been a passionate supporter of women’s right to be educated. Since I began working in a girls’ school I have begun to share this passion with my students more overtly. This week – with the goal of relationship building – I shared a short presentation about myself, my education and achievements, my family and my passions with the girls I will teach this year and I took the opportunity to remind them that according to UNESCO an estimated 31 million girls of primary school age and 34 million girls of lower secondary school age were not enrolled in school in 2011 – narrowing their horizons and undermining their potential to contribute to society. I suggested that on the days when they struggle to get out of bed they should remind themselves that in many countries in the world they would be getting up to go off to work to earn money for their families; in order that their brothers could go to school. To silence the nagging voice in my head that laughingly compared my mother urging me (in vain!) to think of the starving children in Africa and eat up my brussel sprouts . . . I also told them about Malala Youfsazai. I was really heartened to find that several of my Year 9 students knew who she was and something about her story. Malala grew up in Pakistan where the local Taliban had, at the time, banned girls from attending school. Her father, a school teacher, was approached by the BBC to find a schoolgirl who would be willing
to write a blog about the situation – unable to find a family prepared to take the risk, he suggested his own daughter. Over the next 3 years she became well known through her blogs and interviews with overseas press and in 2012 as she boarded her school bus a gunman called her name – when she turned he shot her in the head. Malala was flown to Birmingham, UK where she slowly recovered and a petition was lodged in her name calling for all children worldwide to be at school by 2014. Following her recovery Malala went to school in the UK and continued to campaign for girls’ rights to education both in her own country and worldwide. On 10 October 2014, at the age of 17, Yousafzai was announced as the youngest ever co-recipient of the Nobel
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Peace Prize for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Having worked as a teacher in Kuwait during the years after the Gulf War I taught many young Muslim girls whose families valued the opportunity for them to be educated in a bilingual environment where their cultural and religious beliefs would be respected whilst educational expectations would be high. Here in New Zealand our schools have a growing number of young Muslim students from the Middle East and Asia, many of whom wear a hijab (headscarf) to school – watching these girls return to my own school this week I have begun to wonder how the ripples from the attacks, on Lindt Café in Sydney and the coordinated attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher Supermarket in Paris, over the Christmas period will affect them. Whilst I believe in the right to free speech and could never condone the slaughter of the journalists working for Charlie Hebdo, I also believe in respect for the beliefs and values of others and could not stand comfortably alongside those who deliberately choose to mock and belittle others for beliefs they do not fully understand. When Pope Francis was asked by a French journalist whether there were limits when freedom of expression meets freedom of religion, he responded:
"There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others," he said. "They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasparri (his companion on the Papal tour) if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit." NICOLE WINFIELD, ASSOCIATED PRESS JAN. 15, 2015. The terror threats and assassinations by those who claim allegiance to the Islamic State – brought very close to home just before Christmas with events at the Lindt Café in Sydney – have changed the lives of many Muslims across the world who frequently feel forced to distance themselves from the activities of those who choose to kill in the name of Islam. I wonder what effect this is having on Muslims in New Zealand and my own school – it isn’t an easy question to frame, but we do need to ensure that our focus on wellbeing is inclusive of all. Looking beyond our Muslim students, we live in an increasingly secular society and many of us work in schools where religious education does not form a part of our curriculum. I wonder what messages we send to the students of all faiths who have strong religious beliefs, what struggles they experience and how we can go about supporting them to ensure school is a supportive, positive place.
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