Literacy Is Not Enough: Why Education Alone Cannot Build an Afghan Nation For much of my life, I believed that education was Afghanistan's best hope for overcoming tribalism. If more Afghans learned to read, attended universities, and studied history, philosophy, and science, I assumed they would gradually see themselves less as members of tribes and more as citizens of a single nation. I still believe education is indispensable. But after watching Afghanistan's political evolution over the past four decades—and observing debates even among the Afghan diaspora—I have come to question one assumption that once seemed self-evident: literacy and university degrees do not automatically create national thinking. Nearly a century ago, Soviet psychologist Alexander Luria conducted a remarkable study in Central Asia. Working among communities where some people had recently become literate while others had not, he discovered that literacy changed the way people reasoned. Illiterate ...
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