Although I am required to discuss American politics, if I do not address what drove my students from their homes and what their families are still facing, I leave half of my class in the dust. We are teaching and raising a generation that has the world in their pocket. Since my conversation about Malala, I have made two changes to open my classroom up to the world. Which branch of government is in charge of health workers abroad during a global pandemic?
Are conspiracy theories another tool that the media use to influence elections? Second, I am much more careful with choice in my classroom. Frequently, I will give students a selection of three to five different reading options: newspaper articles, textbook excerpts, whatever medium I can use to get content across. Now, instead of focusing on generic high-interest topics like football or Justin Bieber, I think about what my students have brought up that week.
In the crush of testing, standards and the pitfalls facing students in poverty, it is easy to lose sight of the incredible richness that our interconnected world can offer.
So far, I have been able to find a few opportunities to pull the world into my classroom. Support Provided By: Learn more. Thursday, Nov The Latest. World Agents for Change. Her very existence forces the country to re-examine how people have to negotiate what it means to be a Pakistani Muslim. This somehow rankles also those who believe the system is built against you. That Malala can share her political stance unencumbered — be it on Kashmir, Palestine or about the use of drones in Pakistan when she met the then US President Obama, upsets her critics.
While Malala has grown in stature and ability to engender far bigger causes, her critics have not been able to move past their very unoriginal list of objections. Because she is Pakistan, and she is in spite of Pakistan, which is why their rise and fall are so closely linked. Views expressed in the piece are personal Other articles by the author What Hamid Mir being taken off air means for free speech in Pakistan How criticism of the state is crushed in Pakistan Can the opposition alliance out to topple Imran hold its own?
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Suddenly, her every motive was eyed with suspicion. Instead of celebrating her as the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, we begrudged the award and cited it as another example of the West acclaiming her for its own wicked intentions.
It takes a highly insecure nation to disparage its only two Nobel Prize winners. It is also especially unfortunate when they are not even welcome in their homeland. So, why is there so much hatred towards Malala?
Is it because, as some erudite experts have pointed out, we only like our heroes when they are martyred? That surviving a terrorist attack shatters our image of a perfect martyrdom? And just because the victim survives, that somehow makes it kosher to launch vile and outlandish allegations about the attempted murder and its target?
Or is it because of all the accolades and love she has attained worldwide that makes us deride one of our own? Her opponents question why Malala is the only one to be raised on this pedestal of devotion. The fact is that Malala was internationally recognised even before she was so gruesomely attacked. In an environment of fear and relentless bombings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, she publicly spoke out on behalf of girls and their right to learn, and her stories were highlighted in the international media before she was even a teenager.
She was a symbol of resistance against obscurantist forces and was even lauded by many of those who mock her today. One would be tempted to ask her opponents: how have they honoured the memory of Aitzaz Hasan? Yet we have the temerity to ask why Malala does not return to her home country. Many people label her a tool of Western powers and question what she has done for her country. The Fund works primarily in rural regions where the majority of girls miss out on secondary education.
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