The Taliban has taken a terrible toll on the education of girls -- and boys as well

Afghan school boys wear Taliban-imposed uniforms of turbans and long tunics in a school in Herat. The government has put more focus on religious education since returning to power on August 15, 2021.

Mohsen Karimi/AFP/via Getty Images

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Mohsen Karimi/AFP/via Getty Images

By Grade 11, Hashmat Mubariz had stopped attending school regularly. He was still officially enrolled. The Taliban had not barred him from the classroom, as they had barred his two sisters. But Mubariz, who later taught himself English, became an English instructor and now hosts a podcast and helps run a nongovernmental organization, said the school he once attended no longer felt like a place of learning.

“I felt I was wasting my time at school rather than learning,” he said.

Before the Taliban returned to power five years ago — on August 15, 2021 — Mubariz remembered his public school as friendly and relatively open. Students studied English, science, mathematics, biology and literature alongside religious subjects. They could speak in class, share their opinions and ask questions. The school was not perfect, he said, but it felt safe and focused on learning.

Mubariz, 19, says after the Taliban takeover, that atmosphere slowly disappeared.

“Many people believe that only girls’ education is affected,” Mubariz said. “But boys are also facing a serious education crisis.”

The Taliban’s restrictions on girls and women have been sweeping and severe, barring girls from secondary schools and women from universities and robbing millions of any formal path to education. But interviews with boys and young men show another, less visible part of Afghanistan’s education crisis: Boys are still allowed to attend school, but many say the education being offered inside the classroom has changed so sharply that it no longer prepares them for the future.

NPR spoke to 15 middle and high school students in Kabul, Herat, Helmand, Ghazni, Ghor, Mazar-e-Sharif and Bamiyan. They described similar experiences: less attention to science, languages such as English and Persian, and civic subjects; more pressure to study religion; stricter rules around appearance; and a growing belief that secular education may no longer lead TO a future career. Students and families said the shift has been especially severe in parts of the south, including Helmand and Kandahar, where families already placed a stronger emphasis on religious studies and Taliban rule has deepened that pressure.

The remaking of boys education

The first changes were visible. Male teachers were ordered to grow longer beards and wear turbans and traditional clothing. Students, too, were expected to follow new rules governing their clothing and appearance.

But the most serious changes happened inside the classroom.

English, science and biology received less attention, Mubariz said, while the Quran and other religious subjects became more prominent. Religious instruction was no longer confined to Islamic studies. Teachers of science, mathematics and English were expected to include Quranic verses, sayings and traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad or other religious messages in their lessons.

“Religion became part of almost every class,” he said.

For many Afghan children, particularly in areas where access to public schools is limited, madrasas are among the only educational institutions available to them.

Religious education has become a central priority under The Taliban rule, while modern schools have received far less attention. The Taliban ministry of education says it now oversees 22,972 religious education centers, compared to about 5,000 that were registered under the previous government.

That does not mean all of those centers are newly built. The Afghanistan Human Rights Center says only 316 centers were newly created; many others were existing centers that have since been added to The Taliban education systems. Over the same period, the ministry says only 269 new modern schools were established.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Education did not respond to messages from NPR seeking comment.

A woman educator’s perspective

Shabana Basij-Rasikh, an Afghan educator and co-founder of the School of Leadership Afghanistan”SOLAx”, said the damage to boys’ education cannot be measured only by what has disappeared from the curriculum. Boys are also learning from a society in which girls vanish from classrooms after sixth grade and women are increasingly pushed out of public life. Her greatest concern is for younger boys who have no memory of Afghanistan before the Taliban returned. “Their only normal is not seeing girls in school. Their only normal is not seeing women in the public sphere,” she said. “It’s a matter of time before those young boys are going to become young men who will be making decisions in our society.”

Basij-Rasikh said she sees echoes of the Taliban’s first period in power, when religious texts increasingly displaced science and other subjects and restrictions on dress eventually extended to younger boys. She remembers her own brother struggling with the traditional clothing the Taliban required him to wear to school. “The same thing is playing out again,” she said. “And this is not a surprise to people in Afghanistan.”

The restrictions imposed on women are also affecting whether boys remain in school, Basij-Rasikh said. With women increasingly prevented from working, more of the responsibility for supporting families falls on men and boys. “Today we have an authority in Afghanistan that has made it a matter of national policy to restrict space for women and then place a lot of that burden on men and boys,” she said. “Naturally you see boys dropping out of school to shoulder that responsibility of providing for their families.”

A different kind of classroom

Even before 2021, Mubariz said, students sometimes hesitated to raise sensitive questions about politics, war, religion or powerful figures. Afghanistan was still a conservative society shaped by years of conflict, and students knew that certain questions could be misunderstood, draw unwanted attention or upset teachers and classmates. But after the Taliban returned, he said, that caution turned into fear. Students avoided asking questions that could be considered controversial, and teachers no longer encouraged open discussion.

“I could not express even one percent of my real opinions or ideas,” he said. “I always felt that I had to stay silent because speaking openly could have serious consequences.”

Mubariz and other students interviewed by NPR described a deeper loss inside schools: students losing interest in learning, while some teachers seemed discouraged, absent or unable to teach their subjects as they had before. During the first months after the Taliban takeover, many teachers were not paid, Mubariz said. Some stopped coming to school regularly. Experienced teachers left and were replaced, in some cases, by people who lacked the knowledge or training to teach their subjects properly.

Mubariz eventually decided he could learn more on his own.

Although he stayed in school to take the graduation exam last year, he also studied independently, read books and searched for other educational resources. He also chose not to sit for the Kankor, Afghanistan’s national university entrance exam, because he believed that attending university in Afghanistan would not offer him a solid education.

“I achieved these things because I educated myself, not because of the school system,” he said.

An 18-year-old Grade 12 student from Ghazni Province described the Taliban takeover as the moment when everything changed “overnight.” He asked not to be identified because he feared that speaking openly could endanger him and his family.

He was in Kabul as rumors spread that the Taliban would enter the city. That night, his family received a call telling them to go to the airport. They joined the enormous crowds trying to get inside but turned back after seeing people injured in the chaos.

“It happened like a dream,” he said.

For several months afterward, his school remained closed. When boys were eventually allowed to return, the changes were not immediately dramatic. His teachers were still there, and classes resumed.

But the girls did not return.

“Months and years passed,” he said. “Not even for one day were the girls’ secondary schools reopened.”

At the beginning of the current school year, he said, boys in grades 7 through 12 at government schools were told to wear white clothing and a turban.

He did not object to the clothes themselves. Traditional clothing is part of Afghan culture, he said. What he opposed was being forced to wear it at school. He obtained his transfer papers and moved from a government school to one of the country’s 3,000-plus private schools, largely to avoid the requirement.

But even at the private school, he said, the curriculum also changed. Lessons related to Afghanistan’s civic and national life received less attention, including discussions of Parliament, the Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, the previous government’s constitution and other political institutions.

But what troubles him most is not only what has disappeared from textbooks. It is the growing belief among young Afghans that education may no longer lead anywhere.

He sees graduates of engineering programs selling vegetables or working as day laborers. He remembered one poor young man who had spent much of his life studying but ended up selling potatoes because he lacked money and powerful connections.

“I don’t understand what has happened to Afghanistan,” he said. “You see people sitting in important positions who cannot even write their own names.”

He also believes that students from wealthy or influential families can gain access to opportunities that remain closed to better-qualified students from poor families. For young people watching this happen, studying can begin to feel pointless.

Giving up

Mubariz has seen that loss of hope among his own classmates.

Some dropped out of school. Some went to Iran, while others tried to reach Europe. One of his closest friends struggled to continue his education while trying to support his family after his father, who had worked for the former government, lost his livelihood.

The family fell into severe financial hardship. Mubariz said his friend eventually lost hope and died by suicide.

“It was one of the most painful experiences I have ever witnessed,” he said.

For Mubariz, his friend’s death was part of a wider crisis. Many young Afghans see people with bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees unable to find work while graduates of religious schools may have better prospects under the Taliban government.

He worries that more families will eventually conclude that conventional education has no value.

“If this continues, more young people may choose religious schools over regular education,” he said. “That will have serious consequences for Afghanistan’s future.”

Inside Mubariz’s own family, the consequences are already visible.

His two sisters were students before the Taliban prohibited girls from continuing beyond primary school. Their family does not have access to high-quality online education, so Mubariz tries to teach them himself. They study languages, read books and use whatever materials they can find.

Some girls have managed to continue their education online, but even that option remains uncertain.

Zainab, a grade 9 student, said she considers herself fortunate to be able to attend online classes. She asked to be identified only by her first name Many girls her age have no access to secondary education at all. She asked to be identified only by her first name for fear that her comments would cause the Taliban to target her family.

But her family can barely afford the cost of the internet she needs for school. The connection is also slow and unreliable much of the time, making it difficult for her to hear her teachers or follow an entire lesson.

“Classes sometimes freeze or disconnect before the teacher has finished explaining the material,” she said. “When the connection fails, I miss part of the lesson and must try to catch up on my own.”

Her education now depends on whether her family can continue paying for internet data and whether the connection is strong enough when class begins. She has no classroom, laboratory or library, and no guarantee that she will be able to connect the next day.

Still, Zainab said she knows she is among the relatively small number of Afghan girls who have found a way to keep studying.

“I am lucky to have the opportunity to study,” she said, “but the lack of reliable internet service makes learning more stressful than it needs to be.”

Mubariz still hopes to study abroad. He said he received admissions and scholarship opportunities in 2025 and 2026 from universities including Cornell University, the University of Connecticut and the University of St Andrews. But he was unable to secure student visas and lost those opportunities.

He continues searching for another way to leave Afghanistan and continue his education.

What frightens him most is not simply what he and his sisters have lost. It is what the country will become after another generation grows up without qualified teachers, meaningful academic instruction or the freedom to question what it is being taught.

His parents grew up during decades of conflict and had limited access to education. Their family still feels the consequences. Now Mubariz fears the same deprivation will shape the next two or three generations.

The school doors remain open to boys like Mubariz and the 18-year-old student from Ghazni, but both question what remains of the education offered inside. Girls such as Zainab have been pushed out of the classroom entirely and left to depend on costly, unreliable alternatives.

For a generation of Afghan students, education has become something they must struggle to preserve largely on their own.

Fatima Faizi is a journalist based in New York. She previously reported for The New York Times in Afghanistan, and her work focuses on human rights, women, education and the impact of Taliban rule on daily life.

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The Taliban has taken a terrible toll on the education of girls — and boys as well

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