It’s morning in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s biggest province … and the country’s next generation of children are headed to school.
But what twelve-year-olds like Fatma find when they get there...is of increasing concern for those who want peace in Pakistan's future.
Fatma's school is this abandoned brickyard.
SOT: (children reciting alphabet)
FATMA [subtitles]: I study at the Government Primary School in Lahore. I study English language and I like it. There are no chairs. We have to sit on the ground. It's a problem in the winter. When it rains, there is nowhere to sit.
Each day, the kids bring in a few chairs for the teachers … and they set up the school’s one blackboard, which six classrooms share …
The headmaster, Khaled, showed me around.
MONTERO: So your students they actually have no rooms, no desks.
KHALED [subtitles]: No furniture. No rooms.
MONTERO: This is a nursery?
KHALED: Yeah. This is one. This is nursery one.
MONTERO: So two nurseries you have?
KHALED: Yeah.
MONTERO: What is that?
KHALED: That is waste water.
MONTERO: It’s basically a cesspool right near to the school. It's a mountain of garbage.
Sadly, this school is not an exception. There are some 20,000 “shelter less” schools throughout Pakistan ...and even when there are buildings, 60% have no electricity. 40% have no drinking water.
Because schools are so bad, Pakistan has the lowest enrollment rate in all of South Asia.
Ali Hassan is roughly the same age as Fatma, but he’s recently decided to drop out of the third grade.
QUESTION [subtitles]: Did you not like school?
ALI HASSAN [subtitles]: No.
QUESTION [subtitles]: Why?
ALI HASSAN [subtitles]: Just because.
Ali Hassan now helps out at a local gas station.
ALI HASSAN [subtitles]: I get here at 8 in the morning. I leave in the evening at 8 or 9 pm.
For his toils, he makes the equivalent of 12 cents a day.... money his mother says the family now can’t live without.
ALI HASSAN'S MOTHER [subtitles]: I hope Ali learns to be a mechanic, that he learns this work. When only my husband earns, how can we get by?
MOSHARRAF ZAIDI: Today there are 68.4 million children between the ages of five and nineteen in this country. So I want to repeat this number, 68 and a half million kids between the ages of five and nineteen. Less than thirty million of those kids are in any type of school.
This is Mosharraf Zaidi ….raised in Pakistan and educated in the West, Zaidi is a long-time advocate of reforming Pakistan's schools.
MOSHARRAF ZAIDI: You look at the consequences of these kids not going to school, like I said let's set aside the fear-mongering and the scare mongering of, you know, what if all these kids become terrorists, but setting that aside, the real problem is that, if you aren't capable of participating in the global economy you will be very, very poor. And desperate and extreme poverty has some diabolical consequences for societies and for individuals.
Zaidi reminded me about the longtime problem of "ghost schools", where teachers fail to show up except to collect their paychecks.... At this one, after the only teacher stopped coming, it was left to vandalism...
In fact, there are thousands of abandoned school buildings across the country, while schools like Fatma's have nothing...
The local school council is outraged.
COUNCIL MEMBER [subtitles]: Government officials send their own kids to air-conditioned classrooms, let's see them make their kids sit here and see what it is like. Aren't these the children of God's creation?
In Pakistan, public education has become a battleground. The council says the elite only care about themselves, and keep the poor illiterate in order to hold on to power.
COUNCIL MEMBER [subtitles]: They see these kids as insects in the gutter. They're all corrupt. They're all taking bribes. Hopefully, they'll all be punished by God. All they are doing is filling their own pockets. Let the insects in the gutter die.
The council takes me to a construction site, where the government has promised them a new building…but has failed to deliver.
It’s supposed to house the 300 students from Fatma's school. But I was shocked by what I found.
MONTERO: This is the only room?
MANSOOR: Yeah. This is the only room.
MONTERO: 300 students are supposed to sit in this?
MANSOOR: Yeah. The government prepared its own design, but the teachers say and the school council members say that they did not consult the teachers - what are your requirements.
The government blames the contractor, the contractor blames the government. With winter approaching, the teachers are worried.
COUNCIL MEMBER [subtitles]: Nothing has been built here. That's the situation. Nobody cares.
The school council wanted to visit the local education official to ask what had gone wrong. But he threatened to fire them if they showed up with me. So I went myself.
This is the Education District Officer of Lahore. His workload is so big that he rarely gets away from his desk.
He insisted that the teachers shouldn't be complaining, and that according to his paperwork, the school would be big enough.
OFFICIAL [Dr. Muhammad Arshad]: No, it is not one room -
MONTERO: Well -
OFFICIAL: It's basically...and teachers are actually are not in the knowledge of this whole plan.
I asked him why the children were shelterless while the school was being built.
MONTERO: Can't they be moved temporarily into some building. I mean, right now they have no building.
OFFICIAL: We, uh, we will consider this. I'll ask my DEO's and Deputy DEO's to visit and we'll find out some place. We will definitely shift there. No problem.
While public school officials make empty promises, across town, I find another kind of school that's functioning quite well.
It has a nice new building with plenty of room, and it even provides free tuition and a hot meal.
It's one of the country's many madrassas.
Increasingly, poor parents are sending their children to religious schools like this.
MADRASSA HEADMASTER [subtitles]: Parents who were educated don't send their kids to Madrassa, they send them to private schools, universities. Poor people want their children to learn about their religion.
SOT: Madrassa student sings
Although madrassas are often criticized in the West, many conservatives, like the school's headmaster, believe what's being taught here will make Pakistan a stronger state.
MADRASSA HEADMASTER [subtitles]: Why are we Muslims in this mess today? Because we've strayed from the Quran. If you look back at history, non-Muslims used to tremble in front of Muslims. Today, they don't. Today when they see the situation Muslims are in, they say, "Exploit them."
SOT [subtitles]: Land of Pakistan! Blessed be though, citadel of faith.
That's a message which, to my surprise, is also taught in the country's public schools... where it can influence far more children...
SOT: Pakistan is, Our, Dear, Home Land
For decades, Pakistani schoolchildren have been learning that their country is in a battle for survival.
FATMA [subtitles]: The teachers tell us that India and the British are our enemies. They are killing Muslims. They are behind the bomb blasts.
And Fatma's heard about a new enemy...
FATMA[subtitles]: I do not know much about America but generally people do not like America and they can never be our friends.
MONTERO: You once said to the Los Angeles Times, 'I have been arguing for the longest time that in fact our state system is the biggest madrassa.' Why do you say that?
SAIGOL: I feel that a great deal of the ideology that we think madrassas are producing is in fact being produced in state schools.
Rabina Saigol is an academic who's studied public school textbooks for years and found that public schools have quietly been feeding extremism.
SAIGOL: And I say that it's the biggest madrassa because it has the widest outreach. It reaches every town, villlage, and small hamlet. It's the biggest is the educational bureaucracy. It reaches every nook and cranny of the country.
I wanted to talk to the ministry of education about what it's teaching in the schools. I finally got an appointment at the Curriculum Wing.
For months, the staff has been working on removing the militaristic tone of the curriculum.
As they themselves told me, it's more sensitive than nuclear weapons. It involves the very core of national identity.
MONTERO: I've been to the market. I bought a textbook...
I confronted them with some textbooks I'd found.
MONTERO: Do you think that for the past three centuries the Europeans have been working to subjugate the countries of the Muslim world - do you personally believe that?
CURRICULUM WING [Arif Majeed]: I can't say that this statement is right or wrong. But this has been prepared by the specialists.
MONTERO: But would you personally say this is wrong?
CURRICULUM WING: I have already said that I am not a student of history.
MONTERO: 'The Christians and Europeans were not happy to see the Muslims flourishing in life. They were always looking for opportunities to take possession of territories under the Muslims.'
CURRICULUM WING: So, these textbooks are prepared under the basis of the old curriculum which was prepared in 2002. Now we have replaced this curriculum with the new curriculum. So in new curriculum we will address all kinds of these issues.
The new, more tolerant curriculum has been attacked by many religious fundamentalists, like this man.
MONTERO: Do you support secular education in Pakistan for children?
PARACHA: No, there is no demand in the Pakistan. No demand from any section, from - not from students, not from teachers, not from parents.
This is Fareed Paracha, a leader of a religious party with views similar to the Taliban. He blasts the West for trying to secularize Pakistan's curriculum.
PARACHA: They have started a clash between Western and Islamic civilization.They claim Western, secular democratic civilization now is the fate of humanity.
Just a few months ago, Paracha lead this protest against the latest American aid package, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for education reform….
SOT [subtitles]: Stop the Kerry-Lugar Bill! Stop the Kerry-Lugar Bill!
The religious parties say the US is using the aid to try to hijack Pakistani society…
But ironically, others fear the money will never reach the schools... anymore than it has in the past.
ZOBAIDA JALAL: There is nothing to show today on ground that $100 million US dollars over the last three years had come, you see?
MONTERO: So that money, you can't show...
JALAL: You can't show it. Only few areas somewhere you will find a classroom, you may find some swings there you see. So, but I would say, learn from that. So that - this is big money for us, for the people of Pakistan. I just hope sincerely that it is utilized in the right ways to make a difference in the lives of all those children wherever they are.
Reformers believe the problems that Pakistani children face are so deep that money alone will not be enough to fix them.
ZAIDI: I think it’s generous of the American taxpayer and I think it’s important that congress and the president and the administration have made this kind of a long term commitment. But it is not going to make the difference between a functional and dysfunctional Pakistan. That choice of whether Pakistan is going to be a functional country is a choice that has to be made by Pakistanis. And Pakistanis haven’t made that choice yet because government after government fails to make the investments that it needs to make.
Still, I asked Fatma how she would feel if new U.S. aid money would help to finally fix her school.
FATMA [subtitles]: I'll be happy. I'll be happy if it is built. It would be good.
In fact her school building has just been finished. But the headmaster says it's nowhere near what the government promised.
It's still only one room for 300 students. Some even have to study on the roof.
And the headmaster says the construction is shoddy.
KHALED [subtitles]: There is no railing on the stairs. These are small kids. They could fall as they go up and down.
But Fatma says she won't give up.
Today she's going to take her final primary school exams. If she passes, she can go on to junior high…
And if she survives Pakistan's public schools, she may one day help to fix them herself...
FATMA [subtitles]: I want to study and I want to be a teacher and do everything
FATMA [subtitles]: I want to be a teacher, and my parents say you should fulfill your dreams.
