I found your cover article on the Afghan exchange program rather disturbing. Clearly removing young Afghan teens from their war-torn homeland and providing them with educational experiences in the U.S. is a wonderful thing in itself. But encouraging, and possibly even pressuring, these girls to abandon their own cultural mores seems un-American to me. Is glitter nail polish and physical contact between boys and girls the best America has to show for itself?
Wouldn’t it be a more positive message for these young students to witness a society where a girl’s education is valued equally as a boy’s, and in which girls are free to wear a religious head scarf (or not), just as they are free to wear glitter nail polish (or not)?
In encouraging these girls to reject their own cultural guidelines, this program confirms the suspicion of many in the world who regard the U.S. as a hegemonic power intent on imposing its values on other societies.
Tolerance for religious and social diversity, separation of church and state, and equal protection under the law are the American values to which these exchange students should be exposed, not glitter nail polish and lipstick.
