Bookathon - Y

 Y is for Young Adult

Imagine you are girl and told you can't go to school because you are a girl. You have to stay home and cook and clean instead - for the boys. Boys get to go but you can't. 

When you ask why it's because, as discussed,  you are a girl. Being a girl is not anything you can change. 

So what happens when you DO go to school? Well, when the government decides schools are only for boys, any girl who goes is liable to get shot by the Taliban. Were they just thinking of your safety? 

Malala Yousefzai did a dangerous thing. She wrote a blog journalling her experience. She learned how to read and write at school as her dad was the Principal and operated a private non-government school that accepted girls before all the rules changed to Sharia Law. She was targeted and she was 12 years old when she was shot on the bus on her way to school. The amazing thing about it is she was not killed. She woke up in Birmingham, England as after she was shot she was airlifted straight there from Pakistan. 

The story is in her memoir I am Malala and now she advocates for education and the right for girls to have it worldwide. This book is banned in Pakistan, but even if it was available, most of the women there and even the men have such low literacy rates, they wouldn't have been able to read it. 

It's wonderful to have an education, I certainly value mine. But sadly, for a lot of females, being smart means you'll be targeted and boys resent you. So maybe we need to have a conversation about that. I can think of perhaps a typical male response. Instead of girls having an education, maybe girls should all learn self-defence. Or maybe they should just all stay home, it's safer. Lest you think 'this is just an extreme Islamic thing' I have encountered sexism within Christian communities where girls have no say in anything either and are prevented from having the most basic education or told they cannot do this because they are female. Are we just pretty faces and empty vessels?

What do you think? Malala Yousafazi also wrote a children's picture book called 'Malala's Magic Pencil'. Imagine not being able to communicate, or speak or write and being treated like a dumb animal or pet simply because you are a girl. Or a maid of all work. When I read this to them, children, both boys and girls are horrified. Typically children are now encouraged to speak up and be noisy in class as that is their natural response. It's often always the loudest and biggest that becomes the bully and in most environments that tends to be the boys.  But those who are quiet readers prefer to master this secret thing called writing that you can communicate without even saying anything. I give them chalk malkers and say go for it, write, express yourselves, practise and they write all over the windows. Magic Pencils also require sharpening and the bright ones make little comic books because they all want to write and be authors too. 

The Battle of the Sexes seems to rage on and none of us can really escape from it. I'm all for boys learning nurturing skills too, and it's great to see boys also getting into cooking and becoming chefs at culinary schools and designing smart robot vacuum cleaners, dishwashers and washing machines  at engineering school so us girls no longer need to slave away fetching water. Robots can now do our jobs! In some countries though the shooting happens in schools amongst the children themselves and it doesn't matter what gender you are though it's generally males doing the shooting, schools being taken over, libraries being removed and used as breeding grounds for terrorists. Some people are just haters.  I have been at some schools where they actively encouraged children to fight and be in competition with each other like a real life Hunger Games except they call it House Wars. I don't know the answer to that but I am dismayed to witness that enshrined in their pedagogy. 

Malala completed her high school education in England and went on to study at Oxford University where she graduated with honors. She won the Nobel Peace Prize at age 17 and now advocates for the right for girls to have an education everywhere. She calls on world leaders to invest in 'books, not bullets'

Why not do the same and support the  Great Kiwi Bookathon?