Mohammad Rasool began noticing changes in his children’s school curriculum almost immediately after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021. At first, the changes were small, almost unnoticeable.
“They stopped teaching about leaders like Amanullah Khan who were part of the history books,” Mr Rasool, 32, told The National, referring to the ruler of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929, who was known for modernist policies that included making education mandatory.
“When we asked the teachers, they told us that these people didn’t do anything good for Afghanistan, so we don’t need to teach our kids about them.”
Mr Rasool’s two eldest daughters no longer go to school after the Taliban banned girls from higher education. His younger daughter and son attend a local primary school in the southern province of Kandahar.
The next change he noticed was additions to textbooks that described Taliban leaders as heroes and glorified the war against “infidel Americans”. He showed The National pages from a section on improving vocabulary, which included terms such as “jihad” (religious struggle), “ishghalgar” (invaders) and “murtad” (apostates).
“I was very upset to see that there are parts of the text that talk about virtues of violence and jihad,” Mr Rasool said. He questioned the need to “glorify more violence among the children” in a country that has suffered decades of war. “They are very young and impressionable, and these ideas will affect their minds.”
But according to Afghan educators and academics, shaping young minds for conformity is the very reason the Taliban are rewriting textbooks and changing the curriculum in madrassas – traditional schools that focus on religious teachings and usually run parallel to formal education systems.
Shortfall in teachers
While educators, parents and activists decry the denial of higher education to more than two million girls by the Taliban's ban, they are equally concerned about the education given to children still in school.
In a 2024 report titled Schools are Failing Boys Too, Human Rights Watch documented the effects of the Taliban’s education policies and practices, including the dismissal of female teachers, increased use of corporal punishment and regressive changes to the curriculum.
Due to a lack of qualified teachers after women were removed from the workforce, many schools had to drop subjects such as physics, biology, computer science and English, the report noted. It also found that, in some cases, art, civic education and culture were replaced by “useful” subjects.
At the same time, researchers say, the Taliban are expanding the number of madrassas to spread their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, in an effort to reshape Afghan society.
“The Taliban use a standardised curriculum in madrassas across the country, which has hollowed out public education, replacing it with religious madrassas as a primary tool of educating the population,” said Timor Sharan, co-founder of the Hamrah Network – a collective of Afghan organisations.
Their research, published this year, documented a sharp increase in madrassas in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover – from 5,000 registered in 2021 to 23,000 in 2025, with more than 3.65 million students enrolled.
Even under the Western-backed government that the Taliban toppled in 2021, “it was estimated there were at least 8,000 unregistered madrassas, often called 'jihadi' madrassas, teaching extremist curriculum”, said Samina, a researcher from Drops, an organisation that conducts discreet, women-focused research in Afghanistan. She asked for her name to be changed to protect her identity.
Surveys by Drops found that in the absence of regular schools, Afghan girls have been enrolling in madrassas at an increasing rate. More than 56 per cent of the parents said the Taliban ban on attending high schools was the reason for sending their daughters to madrassas. But many are worried about the kind of education being imparted in the system.
“The content is a very extreme Deobandi interpretation of Islam that is also based around loyalty to the Taliban and its leader, Mr Haibatullah [Akhundzada]. Boys are taught that jihad is the way forward, while girls are constantly reminded of their position in society and the best path for them is to marry someone who’s conducted jihad,” Mr Sharan said.
Studies by the Hamrah Network and Drops found changes in behaviour among children who study in madrassas. While boys were showing signs of radicalisation and extremist thought, even defending suppression of women’s rights, girls were being taught to be subservient to men, marry younger and justify the closure of schools.
“This form of education creates an ecosystem where the Taliban and other militant groups can always rely on this pool of boys to conduct jihad on any of the neighbouring countries and beyond,” Mr Sharan said. “The international community’s failure to understand the scale of the structural transformation that is taking place in Afghanistan will have huge implications for security in the long run.”
Life without skills
Aside from the radicalisation of young minds, parents and educators are also concerned about the effects this kind of education will have on their children's prospects.
“In a few years, we might find that most boys, even with high school diplomas, are not capable of clearing Kankor exams,” said Hamida, a schoolteacher from eastern Afghanistan, referring to the annual university entrance test.
Recent Kankor exams have seen participation of only male students, as women in Afghanistan remain banned from attending universities, already marking a gender deficit in skilled labour.
“I am not against religious education. But my concern is what is being taught at the madrassas,” said Samina. “We are Muslim; we study Quran. I have been to the masjid to study Quran. But I am afraid of how the Taliban are replacing formal education with madrassas, which aren’t preparing our children for a future. Our children need skills, too, to build a future.”
With few alternatives available, Mr Rasool feels a sense of hopelessness over the future of his children.
“First, our daughters are not allowed to go to school, and now the education our boys receive is full of propaganda,” he said. “They are not learning any skills or knowledge that can help them build a bright future. This will impact the whole generation.”
