We’ve all seen the pictures. Forty or so women crammed into rows of chairs, as many as four or five to a table, their heads covered in scarves. They sit in crowded classrooms attempting to get something that most of us accept as a basic right. An education.

For the past 30 years, the Afghan people have been embroiled in conflict. Aside from the most obvious results of war, they’ve suffered something else. They’ve suffered the isolation that results from being cut off from the rest of the world due to trade embargos, travel restrictions and cold war efforts. As that isolation grew, education fell. Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates for woman of any other nation. The majority of people there will not have the chance at a real education. For the past ten years or so, peacekeeping efforts have created a number of schools and institutions of higher learning, but is that enough?

If the pictures are any kind of evidence, then it appears we have a long way to go if we want to create an environment that encourages education. The director brings up an interesting point in his film. Education has never been more accessible than it is now, thanks to the internet. Schooling no longer has to occur in a traditional classroom and learning can happen beyond four walls. By introducing online schooling in Afghanistan, an entire world of educational opportunities can be opened up for the people there. From primary school, all the way through higher level universities, the world educational resources can be brought to people who would not otherwise have them.

Schooling for women in Afghanistan is limited, but it doesn’t have to be. The internet offers options that weren’t available when the Afghanistan conflicts began 30 years ago. By making education a global effort, the tree of knowledge can be planted in a place it may have never grown.