Qena, Egypt (CNN) -- In a deserted playground a few hundred miles south of Cairo, 13-year-old Asmaa Ashraf fiddles with a broken rusted slide. She is waiting listlessly for a lesson with her math tutor. The bright-eyed teenager lives in a sepia-toned village in the province of Qena, a place of rural poverty and neglect. But she has big dreams about education. She wants to open a school one day. "At my school, we'll learn," she says, brushing her hands longingly over the slide. "Teachers will show up and we'll be allowed to ask questions. We'll be allowed to draw with color."
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While Egypt struggles to wade through political problems, its education system suffers
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Literacy rates are low and unemployment is high, especially among females
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Many middle-class families are spending a large part of their income on private tutoring
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A few start-up companies have emerged, however, to address the education deficit
But until those solutions are offered, @placeholder -- and a whole generation in waiting -- will continue to linger near broken slides, daydreaming about the future.