This article is printed by Los angles times .
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Education: Children of illegal immigrants, excluded from regular classes, make do with bare facilities that are at risk of being shuttered.
POUNAK, Iran — In this hilly suburb west of Tehran, Afghanistan's future sneaks into Nabil's courtyard at the end of a narrow alley.
The children who enter through the white metal gate are in the country illegally and therefore are forbidden to attend Iranian schools. So they come to Nabil's secret version, run by the Afghan expatriate in his 10-by-12-foot living room with peeling plaster and little else.
At Nabil's school, there are no brightly painted murals such as those decorating Iranian ones. Nor do the Afghan elementary schoolgirls here wear neatly pressed black, blue or green uniforms, as do their Iranian counterparts. There are no chairs or tables, only an erasable marker board propped against the back wall.
More startling, perhaps, is that the Afghan boys and girls attend class together in a country where segregation of students by sex is strictly enforced by law. There isn't enough space to split them up, said Nabil, 28, who asked that his last name not be used because he fears prosecution.
Space is so tight that Nabil is forced to conduct his illegal school in two-hour shifts divided by grade to accommodate the 80 students. A few Persian-language math and grammar books clandestinely purchased from Iranian education officials at a 20% markup are the only tools his four Afghan teachers have to conduct class.
What the school lacks in supplies, however, the students make up for in spirit, eagerly absorbing every lesson while sitting at perfect attention on the freshly swept floor.
"Children, have you done your homework?" a black chador-clad Shima Jaffari asked on a re
cent Saturday. "Ba-leh!" her 10 fourth-graders responded affirmatively in Persian, Iran's official language and the one taught at all such illegal schools. All hands flew up when Jaffari asked for a volunteer to write sums on the board.
A legal resident of Iran for the last two decades, Nabil said he runs his school at great personal risk. If his landlord finds out about it, he will kick Nabil, his wife and their young daughter out. It doesn't help that their Afghan neighbors who share the four-room structure are complaining about the large number of children.
But it's a risk that he and other expatriates insist on taking. Thousands of secret, illegal schools for Afghan immigrants have sprung up all over Iran, in homes, warehouses and anyplace else principals, teachers and desperate parents can find.
The children who enter through the white metal gate are in the country illegally and therefore are forbidden to attend Iranian schools. So they come to Nabil's secret version, run by the Afghan expatriate in his 10-by-12-foot living room with peeling plaster and little else.
At Nabil's school, there are no brightly painted murals such as those decorating Iranian ones. Nor do the Afghan elementary schoolgirls here wear neatly pressed black, blue or green uniforms, as do their Iranian counterparts. There are no chairs or tables, only an erasable marker board propped against the back wall.
More startling, perhaps, is that the Afghan boys and girls attend class together in a country where segregation of students by sex is strictly enforced by law. There isn't enough space to split them up, said Nabil, 28, who asked that his last name not be used because he fears prosecution.
Space is so tight that Nabil is forced to conduct his illegal school in two-hour shifts divided by grade to accommodate the 80 students. A few Persian-language math and grammar books clandestinely purchased from Iranian education officials at a 20% markup are the only tools his four Afghan teachers have to conduct class.
What the school lacks in supplies, however, the students make up for in spirit, eagerly absorbing every lesson while sitting at perfect attention on the freshly swept floor.
"Children, have you done your homework?" a black chador-clad Shima Jaffari asked on a re
cent Saturday. "Ba-leh!" her 10 fourth-graders responded affirmatively in Persian, Iran's official language and the one taught at all such illegal schools. All hands flew up when Jaffari asked for a volunteer to write sums on the board.A legal resident of Iran for the last two decades, Nabil said he runs his school at great personal risk. If his landlord finds out about it, he will kick Nabil, his wife and their young daughter out. It doesn't help that their Afghan neighbors who share the four-room structure are complaining about the large number of children.
But it's a risk that he and other expatriates insist on taking. Thousands of secret, illegal schools for Afghan immigrants have sprung up all over Iran, in homes, warehouses and anyplace else principals, teachers and desperate parents can find.
"We teach boys and girls, Sunni and Shiites, from all tribes," Nabil said. "This is the thing they need as much as they need food."
Recently, the schools received a helping hand from Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose credits include "Journey to Kandahar," the tale of an Afghan Canadian journalist returning home to rescue a despondent sister.
"We should not forget that saving Afghanistan is not possible without saving Afghans," Makhmalbaf wrote in a newspaper editorial last month. He called on the world community to provide funds to educate 500,000 Afghan children--$15 for each one--in Iran, pledging to help 10,000 children at his own expense.
Agency Responds to Plea
Recently, the schools received a helping hand from Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose credits include "Journey to Kandahar," the tale of an Afghan Canadian journalist returning home to rescue a despondent sister.
"We should not forget that saving Afghanistan is not possible without saving Afghans," Makhmalbaf wrote in a newspaper editorial last month. He called on the world community to provide funds to educate 500,000 Afghan children--$15 for each one--in Iran, pledging to help 10,000 children at his own expense.
Agency Responds to Plea
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was the first to respond to Makhmalbaf's call. Its Tehran office will spend $30,000 for supplies and furniture for dozens of Afghan schools here, agency spokesman Mohammad Nouri said.
In Afghanistan, education has come to a virtual halt. At a news conference last month, Ismail Khan, governor of Afghanistan's western Herat province, described an "educational poverty" created by Taliban rule. But he added that the advent of winter and the fight to drive the Taliban out of power would delay reopening of schools until spring.
That means schools such as Nabil's are one of the few places where Afghan children are receiving an education.
Children at the schools learn basic reading and writing, with an occasional field trip to a museum in Tehran. Nabil and other members of the Council of Immigrant Schools formed by the principals are developing a curriculum of Afghan culture, geography and history that they expect to introduce at the illegal schools next fall.
"In no way is what we do enough," Nabil said. "Today, you need so much more, such as computers, science. The only thing we can do is to teach them to read and write at a primary school level."
Even that comes at a hefty price, given minimal outside help, Nabil said. His students are required to pay a little more than $3 a month, a small fortune for illegal Afghan families who earn, on average, $2 a day. Nabil's four teachers make $18 a month each.
Illegal Afghan immigrants "live in very bad circumstances because they don't have documents," said Yusef Vaezi, who heads the foreign division of Afghanistan's Islamic Unity Party and is based in Tehran. "Their children can't go to school, and they don't have the same rights as [legal] immigrants. But we understand that the arrival of so many Afghans has presented problems for Iran."
In Afghanistan, education has come to a virtual halt. At a news conference last month, Ismail Khan, governor of Afghanistan's western Herat province, described an "educational poverty" created by Taliban rule. But he added that the advent of winter and the fight to drive the Taliban out of power would delay reopening of schools until spring.
That means schools such as Nabil's are one of the few places where Afghan children are receiving an education.
Children at the schools learn basic reading and writing, with an occasional field trip to a museum in Tehran. Nabil and other members of the Council of Immigrant Schools formed by the principals are developing a curriculum of Afghan culture, geography and history that they expect to introduce at the illegal schools next fall.
"In no way is what we do enough," Nabil said. "Today, you need so much more, such as computers, science. The only thing we can do is to teach them to read and write at a primary school level."
Even that comes at a hefty price, given minimal outside help, Nabil said. His students are required to pay a little more than $3 a month, a small fortune for illegal Afghan families who earn, on average, $2 a day. Nabil's four teachers make $18 a month each.
Illegal Afghan immigrants "live in very bad circumstances because they don't have documents," said Yusef Vaezi, who heads the foreign division of Afghanistan's Islamic Unity Party and is based in Tehran. "Their children can't go to school, and they don't have the same rights as [legal] immigrants. But we understand that the arrival of so many Afghans has presented problems for Iran."
Fatemeh Haghighatjuo, a member of Iran's parliament, agreed.
"Education should be for everyone, but we are not a rich country. Even Iranian [children] are suffering because of limited resources, and therefore we can't give any to Afghans," said Haghighatjuo, who serves on the parliament's education and research committee. "If the international community was willing to provide money, then we could support such schools."
Principals Complain
According to Iranian census figures, nearly 2.6 million Afghans live in Iran, although many illegal immigrants are probably not included in that number. At least 200,000 legal Afghan immigrant children attend Iranian schools, according to the Interior Ministry.
Foreign aid officials estimate that two to three times as many Afghan students attend illegal Afghan schools in Iran.
Often, principals of the illegal schools come to Vaezi to complain about local authorities shutting them down, he said. "We go to the Interior Ministry, but the ministry shrugs and says it's up to the local authorities. It's very bad, but what can we do?"
Last year in Mashhad, police shut down 18 schools, Nabil said, leaving 10,000 students stranded. At the urging of sympathetic Iranian authorities, several of the schools reopened as "Koran schools" a few months later.
Despite immigrants' pleas to local U.N. officials and the Interior Ministry, the schools have not been legalized, Nabil said.
That has many illegal Afghan immigrants such as Shafi Rezai, from Kabul, the Afghan capital, banging on the door of the Tehran office of the U.N. refugee agency, pleading for relocation to a country where Afghan children can be taught.
"The situation here is not suitable," Shafi, 14, said in English. "We want to resettle somewhere else where they accept Afghan refugees and let them go to school."
Others, such as the parents of 9-year-old Shiva Faezi, scrape together what money they can to send their children to illegal schools.
The oldest of four children, Shiva rises each morning at dawn, scrubs her face and hands with cold water, then prepares breakfast for the male members of the family. Her cheeks bear scars from leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease spread by sand flies that many Afghan refugees here contract but cannot afford to treat.
To get to school every afternoon, Shiva travels half an hour by public bus, then walks uphill for 20 minutes to Nabil's house. Shortly before the lesson begins, she picks up a crude brush made of twigs and tidies the classroom floor, sending clouds of dust into the air.
"Education should be for everyone, but we are not a rich country. Even Iranian [children] are suffering because of limited resources, and therefore we can't give any to Afghans," said Haghighatjuo, who serves on the parliament's education and research committee. "If the international community was willing to provide money, then we could support such schools."
Principals Complain
According to Iranian census figures, nearly 2.6 million Afghans live in Iran, although many illegal immigrants are probably not included in that number. At least 200,000 legal Afghan immigrant children attend Iranian schools, according to the Interior Ministry.
Foreign aid officials estimate that two to three times as many Afghan students attend illegal Afghan schools in Iran.
Often, principals of the illegal schools come to Vaezi to complain about local authorities shutting them down, he said. "We go to the Interior Ministry, but the ministry shrugs and says it's up to the local authorities. It's very bad, but what can we do?"
Last year in Mashhad, police shut down 18 schools, Nabil said, leaving 10,000 students stranded. At the urging of sympathetic Iranian authorities, several of the schools reopened as "Koran schools" a few months later.
Despite immigrants' pleas to local U.N. officials and the Interior Ministry, the schools have not been legalized, Nabil said.
That has many illegal Afghan immigrants such as Shafi Rezai, from Kabul, the Afghan capital, banging on the door of the Tehran office of the U.N. refugee agency, pleading for relocation to a country where Afghan children can be taught.
"The situation here is not suitable," Shafi, 14, said in English. "We want to resettle somewhere else where they accept Afghan refugees and let them go to school."
Others, such as the parents of 9-year-old Shiva Faezi, scrape together what money they can to send their children to illegal schools.
The oldest of four children, Shiva rises each morning at dawn, scrubs her face and hands with cold water, then prepares breakfast for the male members of the family. Her cheeks bear scars from leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease spread by sand flies that many Afghan refugees here contract but cannot afford to treat.
To get to school every afternoon, Shiva travels half an hour by public bus, then walks uphill for 20 minutes to Nabil's house. Shortly before the lesson begins, she picks up a crude brush made of twigs and tidies the classroom floor, sending clouds of dust into the air.
Hers is a traditional life, but Shiva has untraditional dreams. She wants to be a doctor, she explained, her hazel eyes lighting up as she proudly displayed her neatly written grammar homework.
"I wish it were longer," she said of her abbreviated school day. The Iranian school she attended for three years using a cousin's residency card was better, even if Iranian students ostracized her for being a "dirty Afghan," Shiva said.
She was forced to leave the school this year when her true residency status was discovered by the administration.
Shiva is the only one in her family who can read. Her father took her 7-year-old brother out of school because he refused to apply himself, the girl said.
But Shiva's dreams and her parents' hopes for her came to an abrupt end in the fall. Unable to fend off his irritated neighbors any longer, Nabil was forced to close the school.
He found a landlord willing to rent a building to the school for at least one year, but the $3,000 price tag is one neither he nor his students can afford.
"I wish it were longer," she said of her abbreviated school day. The Iranian school she attended for three years using a cousin's residency card was better, even if Iranian students ostracized her for being a "dirty Afghan," Shiva said.
She was forced to leave the school this year when her true residency status was discovered by the administration.
Shiva is the only one in her family who can read. Her father took her 7-year-old brother out of school because he refused to apply himself, the girl said.
But Shiva's dreams and her parents' hopes for her came to an abrupt end in the fall. Unable to fend off his irritated neighbors any longer, Nabil was forced to close the school.
He found a landlord willing to rent a building to the school for at least one year, but the $3,000 price tag is one neither he nor his students can afford.
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