4 minute read
Tula - Harriet Underhill
Education is not a privilege. It’s a human right.
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In the UK, where all children are able to access education, free of discriminatory limitations, we often underestimate the value that this opportunity holds in shaping children’s lives. In todays UK society, it is not even a question as to whether children will be granted the right to an education but is instead an assumption.
The free verse poem ‘Books are door-shaped’ by Margarita Engle has opened my eyes to educational injustices that still occur all around the world and particularly gender inequalities in relation to accessing education.
The poem is focalised through ‘Tula’ – a young girl who feels trapped within the world she inhabits which places limitations on her simply due to being female. The central metaphor illustrates books as transportational devices through which Tula can escape the brutal realities of everyday life and instead explore a fantasy world where she feels ‘less alone’. However, her parents believe that ‘girls who read too much are unladylike and ugly’ so instead of opening physical books and indulging in their words she uses her imagination to explore ‘distant lands and faraway places’. This highlights the desire to learn and challenge her intellectual curiosity, however societal norms restrict her to a life of childbearing and household duties; innkeeping with gender dependant expectations.
Margarita Engle explores a very topical issue through her words which remind us that in some country’s girls can’t access education and have to fight to be heard. Access to education shouldn’t be determined by a child’s gender, yet 130 million girls globally are out of school and 15 million girls of primary school age will never even enter a classroom.
Many girls face obstacles that prevent them from accessing school life. Every year 15 million girls under the age of 18 are married. Child marriage is a key factor withholding girls from attending school. They are expected to grow up quickly and fulfil duties as a wife. This expectation, although partly cultural, usually stems from poverty and families not being able to afford to look after and provide for their daughters so having them marry young means the financial responsibility is transferred to the husband. Another common trend identified is the onset of menstruation disrupting a girls’ ability to attend school often due to a lack of gender separate bathrooms, no access to sanitary products and a lack of understanding in society around the topic leading to teasing and humiliation. Furthermore, many girls don’t feel safe in school due to gender-based abuse which is reinforced through a report that revealed female university students in Liberia were often harassed and pressured into ‘sex for grades’.
It is important for us, who attend school without a question, to understand that this is not the reality for all. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education, recently announcing that high schools would reopen only for boys. This makes Afghanistan the only country on earth to prohibit half its population from receiving an education.
by Harriet Underhill
In the last stanza of the poem, we understand that in the fantasy world Tula creates in her imagination, girls are ‘heroes’, rescuing ‘other children from monsters’. Here, the idea of ‘monsters’ could be linked to the Taliban control in Afghanistan preventing girls from being educated. This stanza is so powerful as it highlights that girls who push against these limitations and speak up in order to protect future generations from growing up in the same discriminatory society are ‘heroes’.
I have been attending school since the age of three; learning, questioning, exploring. Never once did I question whether I deserved to be there. Never once did I worry that my right to an education would be taken from me.
Human rights are inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. Human rights cannot be given or taken away.
Education is not a privilege. It’s a human right.
Books are door-shaped portals carrying me across oceans and centuries, helping me feel less alone.
But my mother believes that girls who read too much are unladylike and ugly, so my father's books are locked in a clear glass cabinet. I gaze at enticing covers and mysterious titles, but I am rarely permitted to touch the enchantment of words.
Poems. Stories. Plays. All are forbidden. Girls are not supposed to think, but as soon as my eager mind begins to race, free thoughts rush in to replace the trapped ones. I imagine distant times and faraway places. Ghosts. Vampires. Ancient warriors. Fantasy moves into the tangled maze of lonely confusion.
Secretly, I open an invisible book in my mind, and I step through its magical door-shape into a universe of dangerous villains and breathtaking heroes.
Many of the heroes are men and boys, but some are girls so tall strong and clever that they rescue other children from monsters.
Margarita Engle, "Tula [”Books are door-shaped”]" from The Lightning Dreamer. Copyright © 2013 by Margarita Engle.
