What is the reason behind the lack of Education among Pashtoons?

[khushal]

Geography is a big part.

Pashoonistan is nothing but rocks and dry soil, pashtoons spend the majority of their time hunting and gathering food, they got no time to sit down and learn how to read and write.

mixed gender education is a pretty sensitive issue, they fear pre-marital romance between opposite gendered students. For like primary school, i think mixed gender education should be granted upto the age of 10, and after they hit puberty, the schools should then seperate the genders...

Moreover, in Pashtoon or Islamic culture, the man is seen as more dominant than the female, so universities for males only would make sense to them, but a female university student would be useless or unthinkable. That's likely because they expect girls to stay home and bear children otherwise they'd be working in high class jobs but have only 1 child in their late 30's.

In Islam, gender gap is a big issue, it ends up with only males getting degrees or vocational diplomas while the majority of girls stop going to school when they're like 12.

I looked at western society too, they used to have the big gender gap, but now it has been abolished completely in the west.

Your post is completely ludicrous.
Iran has more female phd candidates than males. Its not cultural, its circumstantial.
Afghans themselves have tried to reform education in afghanistan numerous times.
Dost Mohammad Khan tried to reform education but was ousted by the Brits because of fear he was getting close to the Russians.
Amanulah khan tried education reform but was ousted by Brits(by dropping leaflets from planes of his wife's hand being kissed by European leaders)
Amin also tried education reform but was ousted by Invading Russians who viewed him as a rebel to their interests.
Afghans that were forced into refugee camps in Pakistan were only given this type of education which orginated in American Universities.

http://www.pashtunforums.com/political-talk-11/us-funded-printed-abcs-jihad-textbooks-32195/

Afghans themselves want education and have tried to reform education numerous times, it is outside powers that think it is better to keep the buffer state between south Asia and Russia in the dark ages.

[faye]

weren't pashtuns nomadic and farmers? i read that 70% of afghans are agriculuralists.
that would mean that the whole family would be involved in working the fields and looking after the children and home or in a nomadic situation, looking after the animals and home scene.

[laevanay]

you know what I find ****ing paradoxical about all this?

Is that in America Pashtun women by and large are well educated and have viable careers

while Pashtun males are PREDOMINANTLY losers with of course a handful of exceptions. Myself, Admin Khan, Ramdolph and Barakzai being notable examples.

All the Pashtun guys I've encountered growing up are all dope smoking wannabe poser Wiggaaazz (a term for white people who try to imitate african american urban culture, but aptly describes Pashtun males on the East Coast) for lack of a better terms. And they do terribly in school. At best high school diplomas. They end up working at Kennedy Fried Chicken, which I recently found out isn't even HALAL , even though they swear up and down that it is.

Pashtuns are doomed to perish and our foolish culture is the reason why.

I could not agree with you more. Although I like to think of myself and my family as among the educated and more progressive kind but you are correct in your assumption.

I know many Pakhtun friends who are taxi drivers in New York City and when they get their green cards etc I ask them when they will have their kids over, the common response is that the kids are too young and when they are old enough to work they will bring them over. To me the lack of thought for progression is the problem. It could be the lack of understanding what progression is. A Taxi driver thinks he is giving his kids an upper hand because he can introduce him to favorable garage taxi cab owner but nothing more.

When it comes to the education of women, no Pakhtun really cares. My father made it a point to educate his children, all of them and made it a point to ask for girls for marriage to us that were educated. I think there needs to be a culture change, until and unless we value education for what it is and not what it will give, will we ever be able to succeed....

To me holding a degree does not mean one is educated though.. but that is a different debate....

[Admin Khan]

I could not agree with you more. Although I like to think of myself and my family as among the educated and more progressive kind but you are correct in your assumption.

I know many Pakhtun friends who are taxi drivers in New York City and when they get their green cards etc I ask them when they will have their kids over, the common response is that the kids are too young and when they are old enough to work they will bring them over. To me the lack of thought for progression is the problem. It could be the lack of understanding what progression is. A Taxi driver thinks he is giving his kids an upper hand because he can introduce him to favorable garage taxi cab owner but nothing more.

When it comes to the education of women, no Pakhtun really cares. My father made it a point to educate his children, all of them and made it a point to ask for girls for marriage to us that were educated. I think there needs to be a culture change, until and unless we value education for what it is and not what it will give, will we ever be able to succeed....

To me holding a degree does not mean one is educated though.. but that is a different debate....

I think what your friends probably meant was they would rather have their children complete their high school in Pakistan, as opposed to the USA, which is a fair analysis. While there exists high schools in the USA that are unparalleled on earth, the majority of American high schools are not as good as one would like them to be. So what most do is they send their students to different countries where they can stack up on calculus, physics, chemistry, in their high school years, and later attend the good ol USA for their undergraduate degree. For example, Long Island high schools are generally 'good' where as a high school in The Bronx, or Queens, might not be as good(unless the child is smart and manages to attend Stuyvesant, Bx Science, BK Tech, etc).

[RevolutionThroughReason]

I could not agree with you more. Although I like to think of myself and my family as among the educated and more progressive kind but you are correct in your assumption.

I know many Pakhtun friends who are taxi drivers in New York City and when they get their green cards etc I ask them when they will have their kids over, the common response is that the kids are too young and when they are old enough to work they will bring them over. To me the lack of thought for progression is the problem. It could be the lack of understanding what progression is. A Taxi driver thinks he is giving his kids an upper hand because he can introduce him to favorable garage taxi cab owner but nothing more.

When it comes to the education of women, no Pakhtun really cares. My father made it a point to educate his children, all of them and made it a point to ask for girls for marriage to us that were educated. I think there needs to be a culture change, until and unless we value education for what it is and not what it will give, will we ever be able to succeed....

To me holding a degree does not mean one is educated though.. but that is a different debate....

Well I was just highlighting how "back home" there's this notion that women don't work because the males take care of everything (yeah right)

But here in America if these people come from pashtun families; why are the men mainly lazy fools while our women are productive and intelligent. If this keeps happening the future is grim

These men didn't just come to America and decide to be lazy and the women decide to be productive; they learn this from the culture.

[Kushan Prince]

weren't pashtuns nomadic and farmers? i read that 70% of afghans are agriculuralists.
that would mean that the whole family would be involved in working the fields and looking after the children and home or in a nomadic situation, looking after the animals and home scene.

Nope that's just the kuchis.

[Pisho]

Even though the poll doesn't have good options I chose outside influences just because I can relate this to a real life situations I heard

For example
My cuz was telling me that there are too many Taliban in his village and eventhough the guys are harmless somehow the school that was there was burned.. So their hypothesis was that it's not the villagers because alot of the villagers kids were going to the school

In my opinion its a mixture of ignorance laziness and naiveness all mixed together also other countries butting in and ruining it along with some sell outs

[Joey_Gladstonezai]

Hey Pisho,

I disagree. I think that the culture of Pashtuns is such that many just don't see a real value in 'education' as we know it today.

As faye mentioned, the vast majority of Pashtuns live agrarian lifestyles and are dependant on farming and animal husbandry for a living, just like much of the rest of the world used to not very long ago. It can be said that Pashtuns simply just have not "caught up with the times" and arguably, willingly, due to their nature of being fiercely objective to foreign systems or influences. They in large part still live the type of self-sufficient lifestyles which used to be common all over the world before the Industrial Revolution.

After the the development of the so-called New World and Industrial Revolution, people in the West started to change their perceptions of the purpose and objective of life and people developed an insatiable and greedy appetite for money and goods as a prime purpose of life. Even the economy is set up in such a way that it is supposed to be ever-growing, otherwise it is deemed as failing or inefficient. In the process, the values and meanings our ancestors once possessed about life are long gone and when I say our, I mean the majority of humans living today. No one thinks about why humans are actually on Earth in the first place--an only temporary abode--or about fulfilling our spiritual duties on it because they are too busy engrossed in their 'education' and 'job' schedules, priorities which engulf a Western person's life nearly entirely from the age of 4 until retirement, which for many is not even until they are getting close to dying. Imagine, that whole life of a person wasted to institutionalized education and an eventual 'career' could have otherwise have been spent in much more meaningful and beneficial ways to both an individual and the society he lives in.

In Western cultures as well as those Eastern cultures influenced by it, getting a higher education or degree is not about expanding your mind and becoming a better person so much as it is for getting a well-paying job and living a nice, lavish lifestyle with a nice home and car, etc.

Pashtuns are not materialistic by nature and are generally found to be satisfied with very little good that come their way and are taught from a young age that modesty and humbleness are good and upright traits.

Also, Islam plays a very meaningful role in the lives of Pashtuns compared to many other surrounding ethnicities and Islam stresses non-materialism and modesty.

Pashtuns are not naive, neither are they lazy. If they were lazy, they would not be as resistant, and successfully so, a group of people as they have been proven to be toward foreign influences.

[Joey_Gladstonezai]

I also wanted to point out that the seeking of knowledge is not uncommon amongst Pashtuns and that can be seen by the widespread, historic role of the madrassa in Pashtun culture where many from afar used to travel to Afghanistan to study with Afghan ulema.

I think it all values and ideology-based. If Pashtuns were against knowledge, they wouldn't have a culture with such a heavy influence of theological semenaries of knowledge pervading it or the culture of poetry would not be so pervasive as it is either.

Poetry, religious knowledge, as well as self-taught knowledge and wisdom about agriculture, horticulture, plant medicine etc. all play roles in the lives of Pashtuns. What more do they need and why?

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Hey Pisho,

I disagree. I think that the culture of Pashtuns is such that many just don't see a real value in 'education' as we know it today.

As faye mentioned, the vast majority of Pashtuns live agrarian lifestyles and are dependant on farming and animal husbandry for a living, just like much of the rest of the world used to not very long ago. It can be said that Pashtuns simply just have not "caught up with the times" and arguably, willingly, due to their nature of being fiercely objective to foreign systems or influences. They in large part still live the type of self-sufficient lifestyles which used to be common all over the world before the Industrial Revolution.

After the the development of the so-called New World and Industrial Revolution, people in the West started to change their perceptions of the purpose and objective of life and people developed an insatiable and greedy appetite for money and goods as a prime purpose of life. Even the economy is set up in such a way that it is supposed to be ever-growing, otherwise it is deemed as failing or inefficient. In the process, the values and meanings our ancestors once possessed about life are long gone and when I say our, I mean the majority of humans living today. No one thinks about why humans are actually on Earth in the first place--an only temporary abode--or about fulfilling our spiritual duties on it because they are too busy engrossed in their 'education' and 'job' schedules, priorities which engulf a Western person's life nearly entirely from the age of 4 until retirement, which for many is not even until they are getting close to dying. Imagine, that whole life of a person wasted to institutionalized education and an eventual 'career' could have otherwise have been spent in much more meaningful and beneficial ways to both an individual and the society he lives in.

In Western cultures as well as those Eastern cultures influenced by it, getting a higher education or degree is not about expanding your mind and becoming a better person so much as it is for getting a well-paying job and living a nice, lavish lifestyle with a nice home and car, etc.

Pashtuns are not materialistic by nature and are generally found to be satisfied with very little good that come their way and are taught from a young age that modesty and humbleness are good and upright traits.

Also, Islam plays a very meaningful role in the lives of Pashtuns compared to many other surrounding ethnicities and Islam stresses non-materialism and modesty.

Pashtuns are not naive, neither are they lazy. If they were lazy, they would not be as resistant, and successfully so, a group of people as they have been proven to be toward foreign influences.

What a load of tripe. Pashtuns are the epitome of greedy. They're just "NOT AS" Greedy as ferangyan. And this is probably because they lack the means to do it

Pashtuns are agrarian but they can't even do that right, They lack education to produce enough crops to sustain themselves, and yes they are very lazy people. They work for a few hours then sit around chit chatting.

[faye]

Nope that's just the kuchis.

the pashtuns have been dependent on others for the growing of food?
apart from kuchis were the pashtuns just traders, carpet weavers and embroiderers?

[SiiNii]

Pashtuns are agrarian but they can't even do that right, They lack education to produce enough crops to sustain themselves, and yes they are very lazy people. They work for a few hours then sit around chit chatting.

Dude I don't know if you have ever done manual labor outdoors but it is damn tiring especially when the weather is hot, in my old unit we switched to working at night due to the heat. I mean if I was a farmer in Kandahar I would be out in the fields from 5:30 - 11 at the latest if it would meet the target for the harvest, spend the afternoon hunting birds, fishing, or just sippin chai and smoking chillum in the town center.

[faye]

scimitar hasn't spent much of his life, outside nerdsville. he wouldn't understand anything about life in afghanistan.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Dude I don't know if you have ever done manual labor outdoors but it is damn tiring especially when the weather is hot, in my old unit we switched to working at night due to the heat. I mean if I was a farmer in Kandahar I would be out in the fields from 5:30 - 11 at the latest if it would meet the target for the harvest, spend the afternoon hunting birds, fishing, or just sippin chai and smoking chillum in the town center.

People don't usually plant during summers, they plant generally during fall/autumn

[faye]

look out! now he's a farming expert, lol.