Over a month ago, a 14 year old girl from Pakistan named Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban. They shot her because since around the beginning of 2009, Yousafzai had been speaking out against the Taliban because she wanted to go to school. She started writing a blog for British Broadcasting Corporation, which was her means of speaking out against the school closing, not long after the school she went to and her father taught at was closed by the Taliban.
Malala’s situation isn’t entirely unique. The Taliban has shut down many all-girl schools in the Middle East, leaving many girls our age and younger without an education. Their reason for closing them is so 1700’s. They don’t want educated women. They believe that women don’t deserve the same education as men. Women should be educated in house wife things like cooking, cleaning and raising children. WHAT A LOAD OF HOGWASH. But I digress…
Malala was fighting because she wants an education in something other than becoming a house wife, and she believes that other girls deserve the same. Because of her blog and fight for youth and women’s rights, she has won the National Youth Peace Prize and was the runner up for the International Children’s Peace Prize. This 14 year old girl has been doing some serious work for something great that she believes in. How many of us would be able to stand up to a terrorist organization at that age? I’m going to guess not many.
We wouldn’t want to do that, let alone do it so that we could go to school. As Americans, we abuse the school system and take it for granted. We truly do not understand how lucky we are to have free education all the way throughout high school, and not just free education, but a good education too.
Sure, I’m guilty of hating the school system myself. I question why we even need to learn how to use trigonometry in normal life, because let’s be frank, no one uses it except for engineers. The fact that we have the ability to learn trig, no matter how awful it is, and wonderful teachers that teach it to us to the best of their ability, aught to be enough. But it isn’t. We’re greedy. We want more and we want easy. We don’t appreciate what we have, and when we see a brave girl like Malala fighting for a simple luxury that we have, something should go off in our head telling us how lucky we are. But most of the time it doesn’t.
The point is, we need to be appreciative of what we have. We take too many things for granted, and since this is the month for being thankful, perhaps we should be thankful for one of the things we are lucky to have. Perhaps we should make one of those Facebook statuses saying, “Day Whatever- I’m thankful for teachers. They do so much for us that we don’t even realize. I’m thankful for having the right of a free, good education.” Doing that isn’t a lot, but it’s one of the many ways we can show thanks for the teachers and education system. Just a thought.
And as for Malala, she’s doing great. They moved her to a hospital in the UK that is one of the best hospitals in the world for head injuries, they specialize in military personal treatment for injuries sustained in conflict. Aka gunshot wounds. She’s awake and healing. Malala’s future looks bright and I have no doubt that she’s going to do even more great things in her lifetime.
