Instructions
Read the excerpts from Malala Yousafzai’s “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech” and Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin. Both works are about the struggle to provide education in a country where powerful people are against it. In 2012, young Malala Yousafzai was shot for going to school. She gave this speech on accepting the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Three Cups of Tea was published in 2006. In this excerpt, a village pays a painfully expensive bribe to keep its school. Then read the statements of comparison and contrast. Complete the chart by dragging supporting facts from each text into the correct columns.

We are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We have reached the moon 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars. Then, in this 21st century, we must be able to give every child quality education.

Dear sisters and brothers, dear fellow children, we must work… not wait. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It is our duty.

Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last, let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials.
—”Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech”


Haji Ali paused before the building everyone in the village had worked so hard to raise. It held its ground firmly before Korphe K2, with snugly built stone walls, plastered and painted yellow, and thick wooden doors to beat back the weather. Never again would Korphe’s children kneel over their lessons on frozen ground. “Don’t be sad,” he told the shattered crowd. “Long after all those rams are dead and eaten this school will stand. Haji Mehdi has food today. Now our children have education forever.”

After dark, by the light of the fire that smoldered on his balti, Haji Ali beckoned Mortenson to sit beside him. He picked up his dog-eared, grease-spotted Koran and held it before the flames. "Do you see how beautiful this Koran is?" Haji Ali asked.

"Yes."

"I can’t read it. I can’t read anything. This is the greatest sadness in my life. I’ll do anything so the children of my village never have to know this feeling. I’ll pay any price so they have the education they deserve."
—Three Cups of Tea