There seems to be a global consensus that girls' education is a commonsensical solution to issues as wide-ranging as poverty, fertility, human trafficking, and terrorism in the global south. In this article, I inquire into how this common sense about girls' education is produced and sustained. I examine how two radically specific happenings--the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan in 2012, and the kidnapping of schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria in 2014--were transformed into events of international concern and how girls' education has come to be proposed as the solution. In doing so, I highlight the histories and the social and political realities that common sense conceals and its implications for the well-being of populations in the global south.