The Taliban Banned 2.2 Million Girls From Learning
American Schools Are Doing Something Different but Driven by the Same Instinct
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Afghanistan is the only country on earth where girls are banned from secondary and higher education by government decree.
2.2 million girls. No school beyond primary level. No university. No future in medicine, law, teaching, or any profession requiring advanced education. The Taliban has issued more than 70 decrees systematically erasing women from public life since seizing power in 2021. UNICEF estimates Afghanistan will lose 25,000 female teachers and healthcare workers by 2030 as a direct result.
The world watches and calls it barbaric. Which it is.
But there is a question worth sitting with.
What is the difference between a government that bans girls from learning what it does not want them to know and a government that fills classrooms with what it does want them to believe? The Taliban uses force. American public schools use curriculum. The methods are different. The underlying instinct, that the state has the right to control what children learn and who they become, is the same.
Connecticut just tried to require parents to notify child welfare agencies before pulling their children from public school. California school districts have policies facilitating secret gender transitions without parental knowledge. Pete Hegseth just cut Harvard off from military education programs because officers were coming back indoctrinated rather than trained.
Nobody is banning girls from learning in America. But plenty of people in positions of authority over American education have decided that parental rights are an obstacle to the agenda rather than a foundation of a free society.
The Taliban does it with guns. The American education establishment does it with school boards and curriculum committees and policies buried in handbooks parents never read.
Two different worlds. One dangerous assumption in common.
These people do nothing but hurt kids.
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