Promoting peace through education

Last night I attended a talk by Greg Mortenson author of "Three Cups of Tea" - a book on Greg's experiences building girl's schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The talk, like the man, had a single-minded focus - education, particularly girl's education, is the key to development, the key to fighting terrorism and promoting peace and really, the only , viable,long-term solution to promoting change. He understands the complexity and difficulty in what he is trying to achieve and seems to have the required patience. He is absolutely relentless in his message and vision and while his presentation seemed rehearsed (he speaks round the year), I couldn't help wanting to support and believe him.

He threw out one statistic that stuck with me - In 2000, there were 800,000 boys in school in Afghanistan (not sure how they got the number). Now, there are 7.2 million children, including 2 million girls - apparently the largest increase in school enrollment ever.

Now, I know that enrollment in school is not everything; you need to worry about teacher and student absenteeism, the level of instruction, the actual curriculum, etc etc. But, it is a start right?