To teach or not to teach

I've quoted Tzvetan Todorov's view that 'being civilized means being able to recognize and accept the humanity of others'. It's one obvious criterion. But here's a contrast that also bears on the matter. One side of it:

On a dusty highway in open country outside Kabul, a class of young girls, heads covered with hijabs, are being put through their paces in a primary school. It is a scene replicated around the world. The difference is that in Afghanistan a few years ago it would have been unthinkable. The Taliban refused to allow it. Now the feeling of hope is palpable. The girls, none of them older than seven, are already raising their sights beyond the wildest dreams of their mothers. I asked them if they wanted to work when they grew up. The answer, overwhelmingly, was yes. One wanted to be a doctor, another a teacher, a third hoped to break into the all-male ranks of the Afghan police.

I thought of my own mother and my grandmother, both pioneering female doctors. I thought, too, of my own daughter, due to start school in September, and our perhaps casual assumption that ahead lies secondary school, perhaps university and, if all goes to plan, a well paid job. The education system that we take for granted in Britain is still a distant dream here, where the government struggles to find teachers and classrooms. But the girls at the Qala-e-Baig school in Shakar Darra are among 2m attending schools across the country. They are a visible sign of real progress.

When the Taliban fell in 2001 there were only 900,000 children in school, all of them boys. That figure is now 6m and rising.

And here's the other:

The minister for education told me that another teacher had been beheaded by the Taliban in the past week. Schools are burnt down and the populace terrorised.

Educating children, including girls, versus beheading teachers and burning down schools. Whatever you do, though, don't talk about a noble cause.