Educating Malala

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My close friend Jasmin  and I have been cogitating about Malala Yousufzai lately, praying for her safety and complete recovery from the Taliban’s dastardly murder attempt on the young teenager’s life.  We each wrote these two posts on the subject, something that people around the world have been following with their hopes and prayers as well.

 

Educating Malala

By Jasmin S. Kuehnert

In a blog http://academicexchange.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/the-war-on-women-from-usa-to-iran-and-around-the-world/  I wrote several weeks ago, I mentioned the new law passed by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran that bans women from 70 plus majors at colleges and universities in the country. The new law has sent angry shock waves throughout the country as young women search for an alternative course of action in pursuit of higher education.

You see, the Islamic Republic of Iran never expected that its mandate of providing access to higher education to both men and women, it would be women who would be flocking to universities. As the number of women attending universities in Iran surpassed those of male students, the country was suddenly faced with a highly educated, career-minded, and politically aware female population, the likes of which were never imagined by the government.  Read More →

The Hero with a Gun: Not Exactly What Joseph Campbell Was Thinking

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While in college I read an influential book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  It was his first and still his most popular and influential book.  In it he told of how we mythologize heroes in our daily lives, and these heros represent the cultural mass and mores.  One famous quote is as follows: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won, the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.  George Lucas, for instance, was influenced by Campbell’s “monomyths” in the making of Star Wars.  But I don’t think Campbell was thinking about our current crop of action films and the heroes they present to us.

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