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Amanpour
France Faces Test in Wake of "Charlie Hebdo" Attack; Those Who Can, Teach; Imagine a World. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired March 20, 2015 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[15:01:48] CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Tonight: we focus on education around the world as France hosts a European summit on tackling racism and
anti-Semitism in schools after the Paris terror attacks. My interview with the Moroccan-born French education minister, who tells me the battle for
tolerance will be won one classroom at a time.
And for the first time, a million-dollar Global Teacher's prize is awarded. I talk to one of the finalists, a headmaster from Afghanistan and a British
baroness who's his biggest backer.
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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to special weekend edition of our program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
Two months on, France is still coming to terms with the fatal attacks on the satirical magazine, "Charlie Hebdo," by ISIS terrorists. The killings
there and at the kosher supermarket raised tough questions about tolerance in France that the nation addressed this week at the grassroots.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Schools across the country ran lessons designed to engage students on issues of racism and anti-Semitism. It's the idea of
the French education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who knows the issues these children face all too well.
Born in rural Morocco, she was 4 when her family settled in France. She was a lawyer before the anti-immigration rhetoric of the far right National
Front jolted her into politics in 2002. When I spoke to her earlier this week, she told me that she comes at this battle for hearts and minds in the
classroom knowing herself the value of a good education to level the playing field for life.
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AMANPOUR: Minister, how do you plan to change a situation where your country has what's known as social ghettos, where, in many of these,
children have high dropout rates and very weak performance rates?
NAJAT VALLAUD-BELKACEM, FRENCH EDUCATION MINISTER (through translator): Well, the situation in France is unfortunately fairly comparable to what
stands in other countries. In other words, educational outcomes are too frequently a reflection of a child's social backgrounds and poorer job
prospects where many school students give up on education.
We are determined to change this and we are also going to revive what we call the schools map (ph) to ensure we get a broader mix of peoples in our
schools, bringing together children from poorer families and those from more well-off families, from the urban centers and the outer suburbs.
AMANPOUR: Minister, how did you react when children of Muslim parents, many of them, did not accept the moment of silence after "Charlie Hebdo"?
VALLAUD-BELKACEM (through translator): First of all, we're not talking about Muslim children or children of Muslim families. The minute's silence
was challenged in different types of educational establishments in France.
[15:05:09] Some 200 varying instances were reported involving students from different backgrounds and cultures. So this was not specific to one
religion.
What lies behind this is that young people today are ever more inclined to challenge official information. It's a real problem for us since young
people turn to the Internet and television for a lot of their information. They find a lot of disinformation as well. And they don't find it easy to
sort out reality from rumor.
Today, even though a teacher may tell them something, young people tend to dispute the truth of what's been said because they've seen images claiming
to disprove that on social media.
This means we had better educate our young people to handle the media, news, the Internet to save them from these pitfalls.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, because you are a woman; you were born in Morocco. You come from a Muslim parent and you grew up in France in a poor
area. Your experience, how important was school for you?
VALLAUD-BELKACEM (through translator): Poor families seek a better future for their children and it is true that such parents set great store by
education and can be very insistent that the school ensure their child succeeds.
I have a chart for success at school because it gave me a great deal of pleasure. It opened my mind to the world. I learned to read. Reading
changes your perspective and feeds your imagination. It gives you the confidence to go further and all of that happened for me.
I would like all French children to have unlimited opportunities opened up for them as French minister of education. I'm working today to ensure all
of our students can succeed by investing money in education but also by changing the mindset of low-income students so they no longer tell
themselves they aren't good enough.
Sometimes ghettoization can be a state of mind. They tell themselves it's not for me; I couldn't possibly do that. I couldn't manage years of study.
We have to stop this kind of thinking. Everyone has the ability to go far.
AMANPOUR: I wonder how you will convince some of these young people who feel disenfranchised because your prime minister, Manuel Valls, told me
that there are geographic, social, religious ghettos in the country. And we have to understand and accept, he said to me, the reality of our
country.
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MANUEL VALLS, FRENCH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): Relegation has come to the suburbs, ghettos, things I was already talking about in 2005.
A geographic, social, ethnic apartheid has developed in our country. Add to that social misery and daily discrimination has happened because you
haven't got the right surname, the right skin color, because you're a woman.
It is by no means -- and you know me -- about looking for excuses. But we also have to look at the reality of our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VALLAUD-BELKACEM (through translator): Yes, the prime minister was right to use forthright language about a reality which is experienced in that
way by many people. Low income persons in need of social housing should be housed in more prosperous areas to avoid placing an extra burden on the
poorer areas and to redress the balance in terms of housing, redressing the balance in terms of schooling.
We also need to develop transport services and renovate buildings in the most deprived neighborhoods in order to lift these areas and their
residents out of poverty.
AMANPOUR: It seems you've got your political awakening around 2002, when the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, did well in elections there.
Again now, in 2015, his daughter, Marine Le Pen, is doing very well in the polls and may be the biggest winner in local elections this weekend.
How will that affect what you're trying to do in sort of reassimilating France?
VALLAUD-BELKACEM (through translator): Unfortunately, France, like many other European countries, is experiencing this upsurge in extremism, all
the European ministers of education are meeting in Paris to discuss this rise of extremism and the rise of radicalism, two phenomena which are
moving in the same direction.
I myself am taking the fight to the Front National. We are engaged in combating religious radicalism and this fight needs to be waged at a
European level, too, because Europe has to be a Europe of values and not merely an economic project.
[15:10:11] The European values must not forget that it was built in the aftermath of the Second World War on the refusal of hatred, the refusal of
discrimination, the refusal to reject others and all of these are now being promoted once more by the Front National as is, indeed, the case for all
the extremist parties that are flourishing in different European countries. We must come together to resist these extremist messages from a position of
strength.
AMANPOUR: Madame Minister, thank you so much for joining me from Paris.
VALLAUD-BELKACEM: Thank you so much.
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AMANPOUR: And when we come back, teachers on the front line of another kind. I speak to one of the finalist for the first-ever Global Teacher
prize as well as the speaker of the House of Lords here in the U.K., his strongest supporter, proving that those who can, teach. That's next.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
Teachers: we all have a favorite one, the one who inspired or pushed us beyond our comfort zones to new frontiers. And now for the very first
time, there is a prize for the best teacher in the world.
At a ceremony in Dubai this week, the $1 million award went to Nancy Atwell, an English teacher from the U.S. state of Maine. Now the award was
created to raise the teaching profession to respect its status and to encourage more to join its ranks.
The United Nations says the world needs almost 7 million more teachers by the end of this year just to ensure that every child's right does happen to
come true, the right to an education.
My next guest, Aziz Royesh, was a finalist for the Global Teacher of the Year prize. He's headmaster of the Marefat School in Kabul and full
disclosure here: I happen to support it, thanks to the person who really got Marefat off the ground, Baroness Frances D'Souza, speaker of the House
of Lords here in the U.K.
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AMANPOUR: Baroness D'Souza and Aziz Royesh, welcome to the program.
Aziz, let me start with you first.
How on Earth did you go from being a young boy, whose own education was stopped at such a young age, to starting this amazing school in
Afghanistan?
AZIZ ROYESH, FOUNDER, MARAFAT SCHOOL, KABUL: Thank you. It's my pleasure to see you and also Frances D'Souza. I think it was a miracle. I think
when the Soviets invaded my country and forced me out of my classroom at the age of 10 in grade 5, the whole world happened to become my classroom
and the whole people that I was encountered and the books that I read, they became my teachers.
[15:15:06] And that was the reason that life itself drove me to share the things that I've got from the -- my own experiences and through these
people, through these ideas, what appears in my village that they need it. That amount of knowledge or that amount of insight that I had gotten. And
that was, I think, the first type of my career as a teacher.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask Baroness D'Souza because you went to Afghanistan and somehow you met Aziz. And because of you, really, he got the school off
the ground.
Why?
How did that happen?
FRANCES D'SOUZA, SPEAKER, HOUSE OF LORDS: Well, you know, some people inspire you in life. And I went in early 2002. I was part of an
organization which was looking at how we could (INAUDIBLE) democracy and someone introduced me to this man, who had vision and determination and who
was absolutely wedded to the idea of girls' education and he talked and talked and talked and talked to me for about three or four hours. And then
he wrote an article about it. And I began to realize that this was someone who was really very special and needed supporting.
AMANPOUR: You talk about girls' education especially.
And, Aziz, I know you are also committed to girls' education.
But for both of you, I need to ask, even though people support you, even though you have girls in your school, the cultural forces are so strong
against empowering women.
Aziz, how do you break down those barriers?
ROYESH: You know, that's a matter of cultural vision of the community (INAUDIBLE) that for my teaching in the classes with the students.
For me, it was a challenge. I knew that, that there were traditional elites that people that they even -- they didn't think about a single
moment to let the girls to go out of their homes, let alone to participate in their classes where they would be sitting side by side with the boys.
Then we had these mixed classes out of deliberate program that we had. For at (ph), you know, the first step was how to encourage the community,
especially the families, to think about the education of their daughter as a way for their own survivals.
Then to go on with providing the girls themselves a type of insight, a type of vision that they could easily share that with their respective families.
So gradually they would grow and they would acquire that vision to utilize there for their own freedom, freedom of choice, freedom of expression,
their families should not be detached from them. They should be supportive and understanding -- they should understand the things that their daughters
would discuss about.
AMANPOUR: Aziz --
ROYESH: But this was something as an approach that we would come to overcome the challenges of the restrictions.
AMANPOUR: -- when you say families, Aziz, do you mean like the fathers and the brothers?
Are you trying to get the men involved to support their girls?
ROYESH: Yes, yes, because you know, our idea was to get our achievements but we would not be forced to pay a cost for that. And having the families
fragmented through this type of education that we would provide -- were providing for the girls, it was a cost for this achievement. And that
would not be affordable for us.
So the first thing that we did was to help the students to be connected and to maintain that connection with the families in a way that they would be
regarded in a joint effort to form an environment for themselves that each of them would be happy with that and pleased to see the product of their
joint worlds.
AMANPOUR: Baroness D'Souza, when you went there, you were not speaker of the House of Lords. In the interim, you've met President Ghani.
What do you -- is this replicable, this school, this idea around Afghanistan?
Is there the political will to do that?
D'SOUZA: President Ashraf Ghani has said that he thinks that the Marefat model should be spread around Afghanistan so much does he admire it.
But you cannot imagine the kinds of difficulties that Aziz faced, devastated city, a community which was terrorized by the Taliban.
He started with 30 pupils. It's a rags-to-riches story, but the riches are education and culture. And it seems to me that the real key that Aziz hit
upon was to root the school in the community so that the whole community, men, women, boys, girls, are there to support the school and to defend the
school.
[15:20:06] And that is really precious because that's how development happens.
AMANPOUR: It is really difficult, though, as much as we've talked now, as much as Aziz is a finalist, we heard that in the government of the previous
president, Hamid Karzai, they wouldn't certify Marefat unless they segregated girls and boys in the classes.
Again, does that matter?
Maybe it doesn't.
D'SOUZA: Well, it was a enormous financial burden on the school when it happened about seven, eight, nine years ago. But don't forget that Aziz is
a master of getting around obstacles. And what he does now is to ensure that all the things that the government at that time didn't want to see
happen -- civic education, human rights education, philosophy -- he teaches ex curricula. I mean, outside the normal curriculum.
So I think that what he's done is to create generations of potential leaders for Afghanistan and I think that the rest of Afghanistan begins to
see that this school has worked a miracle. It's an oasis of excellence in that very uncertain country. And it has been called the St. Paul's of
Kabul.
AMANPOUR: Of course, St. Paul's, one of the best schools in the world right here in London.
Aziz, you didn't win the $1 million. But there is a $25,000 award that went to all the finalists.
What will you do with that $25,000?
What would you have done had you won the $1 million?
ROYESH: I had already donated the $1 million if could win that. I think that would have been the prize for my students and my fellow faculty. And
that's $25,000 would also be used for the betterment of the activities that we have for the expansion of the vision of Marefat and the war (ph) that
we're doing at Marefat because there are hundreds of students and the fellow teachers that they are waiting to see a progress for the programs.
I think that's $25,000 will be the smallest gift that I can offer to thank their contribution for the joint work that we are doing and especially for
the consolidation of the vision that I have behind education for a better community to be formed and the rest of the five years to come or 10 years
to come at the end of the decade of change in Afghanistan in 2015 -- 2025.
AMANPOUR: Aziz Royesh, thank you very much.
Baroness D'Souza, finally to you, do you see hope in the future?
Or are we going to see Afghanistan --
D'SOUZA: If we have a school like Marefat, there has to be hope in Afghanistan and even though Aziz was not the top 10 winner, he is also
winner and what we're going to do because of what President Ashraf Ghani said is to try and raise a Marefat million in order to set up a teacher
training college.
AMANPOUR: Well, good luck to you both.
Baroness D'Souza, speaker of the House of Lords; Aziz Royesh, headmaster and finalist from the Marefat School in Kabul, thank you so much.
Education, of course, the great equalizer, becoming a reality, thanks to people like Aziz and Baroness D'Souza.
Now after a break, imagine a world in desperate need of more teachers, 7 million more to be precise as we said. And imagine a classroom where
neither time nor age are barriers to knowledge. That's when we come back.
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[15:26:06] AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, we've seen and heard now how good teaching can change lives for better and forever. But imagine a world
without teachers. For 61 million children, that is the sad reality. And the United Nations says half of those youngsters will never even see the
inside of a school.
But it is also never too late to learn, never too late to make that difficult journey to knowledge. As Kimani Maruge proved, when he became
famous the world over for starting school at the age of 84, sitting alongside his much younger classmates, learning math, English and Swahili.
Now my sister, the photojournalist Leila Amanpour, took this photo of him in Kenya back in 2004. And he would die five years after the picture was
taken.
But old man Maruge's quest for knowledge took him to speak at the U.N. He became a prefect at his school and it took to leave an inspirational legacy
that is still celebrated the world over.
Not to be outdone, 90-year-old Priscilla Sitienei, also in Kenya, is the world's new oldest pupil. To her little classmates she's affectionately
known as Gogo. That's grandmother in the local dialect. For some of them, it is not just a nickname because seven of the children in her class are
also her own great-grandchildren.
Says Priscilla, she wants to inspire them all to learn. After all, education has no age limit. And she has said that she wants every child,
especially girls, to know that education will be their wealth.
And that is it for our program tonight. Remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.
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