It is right for the world and us to worry about the impact of Afghanistan’s dysfunctional educational system, especially when it has been demonstrated that poorly educated young men in a country as large as Afghanistan pose a serious security threat to the rest of the world. Millions of families, especially those with little money, send their children to religious schools or madrassas. Many of these schools are the only opportunity available for an education, but some have been used as nurturing ground for violent extremism. There is no doubt that madrassas need to be reformed, but what is even more critical is the reform of public sector educational systems.

The last three decades Afghanistan’s education system was steered with ample radicalization. Control of the education system has been a mobilizing force for the conservative and radicalized movement that led to overthrow of the Soviet government and the subsequent rise to power of the Taliban. During the reign of the Taliban the educational system was inclined to produce Mujahedeen. Till date Taliban diverged several Quranic verses for justifying killings of thousands of innocents, prohibiting women from acquiring education, labeling co-education illicit and the modern scientific inventions desecrated, the list goes on and on. Aiming to put Afghanistan on the course of endemic upheaval and turmoil, Taliban’s justification will stand sufficient.

Afghanistan’s spending on education is not enough seeing the magnitude of illiteracy. The remedy is to increase the proportion of public resources going into education. If tax-to-GDP ratio cannot be increased, the state should be willing to divert resources from sectors with lower priority towards education. The donor community has been prepared to help with funds when it is feared that domestic resources were constrained to allow for an increase in public sector expenditure on education.

Poor quality of the instruction should preliminarily be considered. The obvious solution is to invest in teacher training, reforming the curriculum and improving the quality of textbooks that should be deficient of religio-ethnic biases. The high quality and standard of books must be kept on the top priorities. There may be poorly constructed or the buildings may be poorly maintained. The students may not even have chairs and desks where they can sit and work. This problem can be handled, by committing more resources for public sector education.

Afghanistan’s education system requires an almost total overhaul. In the modern world, economic growth and the spread of democracy have raised the value of education and increased the importance of ensuring that all children and adults have access to high quality and effective education. Education promoting the rich human values is increasingly driven by a growing understanding of what works in education and how to go about successfully improving teaching and learning in schools with sufficient resource allocation.