On my way in to work on any given morning, I try to work out which of the particular routes I can take to work might be the quickest. I run through the first lesson in my mind as I drive. I try to remember if I have done all the photocopying. I wonder about what time I’ll be able to collect my son from his school at the end of the day. Some days I might get annoyed by another driver’s roadcraft as I listen to the radio news. And then I get to work. On the whole, my days pass uneventfully, and then I go home. Most of my days are just ordinary boring days. But one thing I do as I drive is I listen to the news. And the news these days is worrying. And is it worryingly far from unique. 

When I hear the news, I realise my life as a teacher is not the experience of teachers everywhere. I do not worry if I will be physically attacked. I do not worry that one of my students will tell some shadowy police force what I have said. It doesn’t even occur to me that a local militia might burst into my college and kill and rape students, take them away or ban them from learning. But that is the life some of my teacher colleagues in other countries face daily.  

Background: Help urged for Afghan educators after Taliban takeover

Opinion: Why joyful education is key to catch-up worldwide

More from David Murray: What I want for my learners? It’s in the art around us

One need only think of the horror of the 2004 school siege in Beslan, in Russia, the 2014 kidnapping of girls from a school in Chibok, in Nigeria, or the 2014 slaughter of students in Murree, Pakistan, to see that schools and colleges are not always the safe environments that we take for granted. In fact, around the world, schools and colleges are often specifically targeted for attack. The cases are too many to enumerate. And what is happening in Afghanistan right now has happened before.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) reports that there has been an increasing number of attacks on schools in the past seven years, for military, political or religious reasons. Schools are ransacked to provide boy soldiers. Girls are raped or kidnapped. Teachers are humiliated or killed. Between 2015 and 2019, there were attacks on education in 93 countries.  That is, in 48 per cent of the countries on Earth, schools were targeted for attack in the past seven years (and this does not include the very many school shootings that have happened in America). In 37 of those 93 countries, that is 19 per cent of the countries of the world, the attacks amounted to a systematic and sustained pattern.

As GCPEA say: “Attacks on education occur in many countries affected by armed conflict, insecurity and weak systems of human rights protections or political pluralism. Schools and universities should be safe havens where students and educators can work toward a better future. Instead, in at least 37 countries globally, there is a pattern of attacks on education by state security forces and non-state armed groups.” I would urge you to visit GCPEA’s website. It is filled with facts, figures and the devastating testimonies of affected teachers and students. It speaks of enormous suffering and fear. 

What is the norm in teaching? 

We who work in our comfortable western colleges, whose main worries are Ofsted and whether we’ll get the marking done in time, are historically and geographically abnormal. The historical norm is for education to be denied or attacked or controlled. We here and now rightly see colleges and schools as sanctuaries, somewhere special and set apart where important work is done for the good of society as a whole. But we should be aware that this not a universally held view. For many, schools and colleges are literal battlegrounds and legitimate targets for attack. 

The reason why schools and teachers are so often targeted is obvious. Education is a major driver of social change in any society. Indeed, it is one of the key metrics by which development is measured. Of these development metrics, according to the charity The Girl Effect, the very central measure which best reflects a country’s progress is the proportion of twelve-year-old girls who are in full-time education. Teach 12-year-old girls, and you’ll change the world. But deprive them of education and you’ll be able to keep control of your country for your own nefarious ends.

Even then, you might want to go further, and try to keep the girls and women at home, control what they learn, keep them out of the way. Because otherwise they’ll overturn the world. Education really is the primary long-term developmental key to a country’s health and wealth and wellbeing, and even to a people’s freedom. And it is being fought over in many, many places, with the education of girls as the battleground.

Difficult questions

Our teaching unions and our government have an obvious international focus and seek to support teachers abroad. Charities such as GCPEA and Save the Children try to protect both teachers and children. But I find myself driving home from work some days wondering what I would do if my students were being removed from schooling on ideological grounds or if I were no longer actually paid to go in and teach. What would I do if a democratically elected and popular government started to use education as a political tool?

Or if teachers were having to teach only what was deemed patriotic or acceptable, with the media attacking teachers as a regressive and backward influence. Fortunately, I do not have to face such questions. Instead, on my way home I stop at the supermarket to buy some bread or milk. And then I spend the evening with things other than education on my mind. I relax. For some people, though, there is nothing more important than education in their lives. And some teachers are daily sacrificing their wellbeing, comfort, safety and even lives to provide learning to their students. That stuns me. And I am humbled to be in the same profession as such generous and noble souls. Meanwhile, I am ready to welcome as many Afghan students into my classroom as I can physically fit in, the girls in particular. Because the classroom is where they belong.   

David Murray is an English teacher at City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College