- Jeremy Garner
- Blanket, TX
- United States
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What if we sent more books than bullets to Iraq and Afghanistan??
Is Education the ultimate terrrorist krpytonite?
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Matthieu Miossec 100+
Edwin Nazarian 10+
Not if the population we are trying to reach is illiterate - How you do think a population can be literate?
How exactly do you think that a population can be literate If we give them nothing but guns and bullets?
Imagine you have never seen a school or a book, but only guns, how could you type in English here on TED?
I am not saying "Let's do it, Let's send them books"
what I am saying is if "we" stop sending / selling guns to them, they will have to fulfil that artificially created emptiness with something. so here we have created an artificial emptiness. in a x time they will seek to fulfil that emptiness with something, and once we offer them something (book) they may accept it.
I give you an example: why a heavy smoker find it hard to give up smoking?
because they don't know with what they replace this habit, but once they find something more interesting, compelling and challenging they may start to thinking of giving up smoking.
as we know these people there with their own economy can't produce bullets ( they exchange it - you know with what) but once there will be no exchange, there will be no bullets, so no one can shoot.
empty gun is worthless. (if you have been in Army you may know what I am talking here)
In business - they first create the problem then they offer solution - (if you watch TV pay attention on Advertising texts - not the pictures)
between Nations first they find a problem (then they make it bigger to convince us that pay more taxes) so then they go and try to solve that problem with war.
schools looks for illiterate people ( they tell you that you must know ABC in order to get XYZ) then offer them literacy
cheers
Matthieu Miossec 100+
What needs to be implemented is a strong educational infrastructure before we can even talk about books (in English?), that is for the government of Afghanistan to promote but of course the world can help too. I think what Afghanistan needs to do to promote education could make for a seriously interesting conversation (although we all should gather a bit of context on the country first). But 'sending guns instead of bullets' sounds to me like it's just an appealing idea because it sounds nice not because it describes some great plan.
The other thing that bothers me is that this post seems to be also a veiled critique of the intervention in Afghanistan. It implies that the war in Afghanistan was a bad thing and that the power of books could have been a better solution and now is the time to replace military action with books. We need both. Clearly the country needs a defense against terorrism (the masterminds of which are perfectly literate) and education won't do in the short term to quash a very imminent threat. A strong Afghan police force is needed to ensure that education has somewhere to flourish. We can all sell a hippyish message but at the end of the day, we wouldn't wish it on ourselves but again, it's easy to abstract away those countries (and you'll all be offended by this insinuation, but it's true)
Apart from that, I find your post somewhat naive, that somehow you're going to be able to stop the taliban from obtaining arms. Your views on smoking are also pretty naive. You can have many passions in life and still smoke like a chimney. Last paragraph is tired rethoric, you didn't really need to think what you wrote. Mantra almost.