SUMMARY: Last year, Bana Alabed sparked a worldwide following for tweeting from Aleppo in Syria while it was under attack amid a years-long civil war. Now, the 8-year-old is authoring a book about surviving and escaping the conflict. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Marcia Biggs talked to Alabed and her mother in Ankara, Turkey, where they are living today.
SUMMARY: "Step," a new documentary, follows students from the Baltimore Leadership School for Girls, an institution with the primary goal of 100 percent college acceptance. But that's not their only success. Girls at the school channel their strengths into practicing step, an artform that combines movement, percussion and more. Members of the school explain what the program has meant to them.
SUMMARY: Teenagers today have never known a world without smartphones and social media. But how is this technology influencing the way they view themselves and the world? That’s the question journalist and author Nancy Jo Sales set out to answer in her new book, “American Girls.” Sales joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the intersection of puberty, pornography and peer pressure in the Internet age.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Joining me now is author Nancy Jo Sales.
So, what are the challenges that American girls are facing today that are different from the ones they have always faced?
NANCY JO SALES, Author, “American Girls”: Girls use social media lot. They’re on their phones a lot. And I think most parents are aware of that.
So, really, the question is, what is happening there, and how are these kind of — some regrettable trends that we have seen happening for some time, such as the sexualization of girls, bullying, how are these moving on to phones and on to screens? And what is this environment doing to the life of girls and boys?
HARI SREENIVASAN: You paint a picture almost of these young girls at this kind of intersection of the existing angst that a teenage girl has, combined with this technological leap that we’re all taking together, combined with pornography.
NANCY JO SALES: Yes, I think the kind of elephant, maybe dinosaur in the room right now is pornography. Pornography has been available online for some time.
But I don’t think we have really begun to have a conversation about what that is doing to kids. And we know that they’re watching it. They’re teenagers. They’re going through puberty. They’re curious. They’re watching pornography.
But this tends to be more and more violent pornography that is also, one could I think reasonably say, very degrading to women. And this is where a lot of teenagers now find their sex-ed. And porn is also — the porn aesthetic is also really engulfing social media. And social media is just full of really explicit sexual content.
And whether or not your child wants to see it or intends to see it, they are likely to see it.
Barbie, America’s best-selling doll, is getting a new look. Mattel announced Thursday that it is introducing three new Barbie’s with different body shapes for the first time in its history.
Barbie’s makeover reflects a changing marketplace where diversity is no longer just a buzzword, but a reality.
“Mattel and toy companies have been challenged by world in which so many ways to play,” says toy industry expert Richard Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is joined by Megan Garber, a culture writer for The Atlantic to discuss the business reasons behind this decision and Barbie’s impact on our culture and young girls.
SUMMARY: It was a very special day for the Zabuli Education Center, located about 100 miles north of Kabul. For the first time, girls in that village graduated from high school. Special correspondent Beth Murphy of the Ground Truth Project reports on the hopes and challenges for students and educators there.
BETH MURPHY, The GroundTruth Project: Winter in Afghanistan signals that the school year is ending. In this village, this unprecedented graduation comes at a difficult time in the country.
RAZIA JAN, Founder, Zabuli Education Center: Today is a very special day for us. It is beyond my thoughts, beyond my dreams that we will be sitting here with our first graduating class.
(APPLAUSE)
BETH MURPHY: This is the first time girls in this village have ever graduated from high school. When the Zabuli Education Center opened in 2008, the villagers wanted it to be a boys school. But attitudes here have changed.
RAZIA JAN: This is our first young woman who get married and she is still in school. And she wants to continue her education.
(APPLAUSE)
MAN (through interpreter): And thanks to the people of this village, who really supported and helped the school. Without your help, this wouldn’t be possible.
RAZIA JAN (through interpreter): And, also, you really helped us. Without your help, this wouldn’t be possible.
MUHAMMAD MALANG ATAYE, Director, Deh Sabz Ministry of Education (through interpreter): It is my duty, and I feel a strong responsibility. These are our students, and they are like my daughters. Coming to this ceremony will help convince them to continue their education, and also help to convince their parents.
BETH MURPHY: This first graduation followed many of the traditions you would expect, parents overcome with pride and lots of time spent reminiscing.
SUMMARY: President Obama on Saturday called on states to cut back on standardized testing for U.S. school kids, who, on average, take eight of them every year, from pre-K through 12th grade every year. The Obama administration also released a testing action plan with new guidelines. Kate Zernike of The New York Times joins William Brangham to discuss.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): President Obama and the federal Department of Education are calling on states to cut back on standardized tests in schools. U.S. school kids from pre-K through 12th grade, on average, take eight standardized tests every year. That’s almost one test a month during the school year.
In a Facebook video yesterday, the President said teachers have told him the pressure to teach to those tests — quote — “takes the joy out of teaching and learning.”
His administration has now released a testing action plan with new guidelines.
For more insight on that, I’m joined by Kate Zernike of The New York Times.
Welcome.
KATE ZERNIKE, National Correspondent, The New York Times: Thank you.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, this is a pretty big statement from the president on this very contentious issue. Why — why is he coming out now?
KATE ZERNIKE: Well, I think they wanted to get past the spring testing push last year, or this — or this year.
But I think, also, there was a report coming out from the Council of the Great City Schools, which is a coalition of about 70 urban school districts. And they have generally been pro-testing. But their superintendent set out to find out how many tests the kids are taking.
And what they found, the report also came out yesterday — or Saturday — was that there are just are — that, as you said, there are, you know, eight tests a year. There’s just so many — so many people are calling for so many different tests, that a lot of these tests are — they’re not only onerous, but they’re sort of pointless and purposeless. They’re not really tied to what we want them to be tied to, to learning in the classroom.
MEGAN THOMPSON (NewsHour): Twenty-eight students at Kabul University filed for a first-of-its-kind class for Afghanistan.
It’s the introductory course in a new master’s degree program in gender and women’s studies in a county that has long struggled to provide equal rights to women.
When the Taliban seized power in 1996, the hard-line Islamist regime banned women and girls from going to school, having jobs outside the home, or even stepping out in public without being covered head to toe in a burqa.
After the U.S.-led invasion after 9/11 toppled the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan’s new constitution guaranteed women’s rights.
There’s been progress, but many Afghan women remain marginalized, and violence against women has been on the rise.
For example, earlier this year, an angry mob beat a 27-year-old female law student to death in the center of Kabul, the nation’s capital.
Protesters renewed calls for the government to do more to protect women.
Still, millions of Afghan girls and women have gone back to school, their access to higher education remains limited.
One Islamic studies (knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, IMHO) professor at Kabul University disapproves of the new women’s studies program there, because, he said, women are not, in fact, equal to men.
Students in the two-year program hope to change those beliefs.
ZHEELA RAFHAT, STUDENT: This gender program is really needed in Afghanistan, because many women do not know about their rights, so through this program, we can make women aware of their rights, which enables them to work and study in this society, and we also want to tell women that you are not only made for housework.
MEGAN THOMPSON: The university expects these empowered graduate students to spread that message beyond these classroom walls.
SUMMARY: Fifteen years ago, the UN set a goal that by 2015 there would be universal free primary education. Although the number of children out of school has been cut almost in half, getting them to stay in school has proved more challenging. The WNET series “Time for School” travels to India to see whether education has improved for young girls in the country.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Fifteen years ago, the United Nations set a goal: By this year, every child in every nation should be able to obtain free basic education.
While the number of children out of school has been cut almost in half, there are still 57 million worldwide who have never set foot in a classroom. Hundreds of millions more have dropped out.
PBS has been reporting on the global education crisis by following six children from different countries over 12 years, part of WNET’s documentary series “Time for School.”
Tonight, we travel to India, where nearly 100 percent of children start primary school. But especially for girls in rural areas, staying in school remains a challenge, and literacy rates have not improved.
NARRATOR: Neeraj Gujar is 9 years old and lives with her tightly knit family of herders in a small village in Rajasthan, a desert region in the northwest of India. It’s a deeply traditional community, where women rarely have the chance to go to school.
NEERAJ GUJAR, India (through interpreter): My name is Neeraj. I’m about 9 or 10, and I have been studying for the past year, math, multiplication, addition. So I’m learning.
QUESTION (through interpreter): Did you ever go to school?
WOMAN (through interpreter): What would I go to school for? What’s so great about being educated? Even if you study, these educated people have nothing to do. Anyway, the everyday chores will take over.
NEERAJ GUJAR (through interpreter): I work during the day. I do so much. I have to sweep. I have to bring water. I have to make dung cakes. I have to graze the cows.
NARRATOR: Like many girls here, Neeraj can only go to school if she does so at night. In Rajasthan, 56 percent of the female population is illiterate. Schools like hers started in India to educate the country’s legions of girls, who must work all day.
SUMMARY: Video games are still largely aimed at a male audiences, which is no surprise since women make up a small portion of game designers and programmers. But that doesn't mean that girls aren't interested in playing and creating. Girls-only computer camps aim to balance the gender gap in the next generation of coders. Special correspondent Sandra Hughes reports.
SANDRA HUGHES (NewsHour): It’s no secret that video gaming is aimed at a male audience. From creation to design to playing the games, the mostly violent first-person shooter games target boys, not girls.
No wonder. In 2013, women accounted for just 11 percent of computer game designers and only 3 percent of programmers. Ten-year old Scarlett Thompson isn’t too young to understand there’s a gender gap.
SCARLETT THOMPSON, Alexa Cafe Participant: I love video games.
SANDRA HUGHES: Do you really?
SCARLETT THOMPSON: Yes. So, I mean, there’s really…
SANDRA HUGHES: So, what’s it like — what’s it like for a girl who likes video games? Is it a tough world to be in?
SCARLETT THOMPSON: Kind of, because then, like, you have to compete with people, and it’s just — sometimes it’s really hard, like, online. It’s not as fair and, like, I — like, oh, no I have a girl on my team. What am I going to do?
SANDRA HUGHES: These girls want to be more than just on the team. They want to create the game. They spent their summer break, along with thousands of others, at girls-only computer coding camps like the Alexa Cafe and Code Like a Girl.
These camps aim to balance the gender gap in the next generation of coders by supporting an early interest in technology from girls.
