Pakistani Mother enrolls in first grade

Pakistan - Rukhsana Batool doesn’t quite look like her fellow first graders at an elementary school in this village in northwest Pakistan. Batool towers over the rest of the children, she is covered in a white burqa - the full length Islamic veil- and she is a 25-year-old married mother of three. Batool’s parents had never allowed her to go to school. It’s something she always dreamed of doing. Hard-line religious groups here say women’s education is un-Islamic and warn families not to send their girls to school.  More…