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Tuesday, May 6
The Indiana Daily Student

Fulbright scholars 'hopeful' for future of education

Afghan professors share their country's history, culture

A week-long seminar will be held in August to report on educational progress made in Afghanistan by Afghan education professionals. \nThe panelists for the event will be four Afghan professors who are currently training at IU's School of Education as part of a U.S. State Department Fulbright scholarship. The four, who are all English professors, have been attending English and technology courses at IU and studying classroom instruction techniques for the past three months. In a few days they will fly back home to use the new skills they have acquired and disseminate the techniques they have learned to their Afghan colleagues.\nMonday evening the four instructors held a public discussion at the Monroe County Public Library during which they discussed and answered questions about Afghanistan's history, culture, and educational system.\nThe instructors displayed maps, photographs, and colorful traditional dresses of their country.\nAssociate Professor Mitzi Lewison, a specialist in language education, has been training the Afghan professors and will travel to Afghanistan in order to participate in the August education seminar. She said the returning scholars will make a positive contribution to their country's higher education system. "They are so full of hope and promise, it makes me hopeful," she said.\nLewison is working to secure another grant to have more Afghan professors sponsored for training.\nThe current group of scholars expressed their anticipation to implement and adopt some of the new educational methodologies they have learned but also expressed a sober recognition that Afghanistan's war-ravaged educational system and infrastructure will be difficult to rehabilitate.\nProfessor Mohammed Zaher Osool told Monday's audience that Soviet military intervention from 1978 until 1989 utterly devastated the country's civic institutions and educational system. One-and-a-half million Afghans are estimated to have died and the country's economic output decreased by half as a result of the violence during that period. The conflict also left Afghanistan as one of the most heavily landmined countries in the world. \nNoor Ahmadzai, professor of linguistics, served as a manager of a landmine awareness project for seven years in Afghanistan. He said UNICEF estimates that 11 million mines were sown amid the country's population of 25 million. \n"One mine is there for every two Afghans," he said. He added that areas around schools had been strewn with landmines and that the demining process is difficult and expensive.\nConflict and landmines have undermined education efforts in Afghanistan and it is estimated that 70 percent of the population is illiterate.\nProfessor Mohammad Hakim Azimi said there is a severe shortage of qualified teachers and teaching materials. He said classrooms are often empty rooms devoid of chairs, tables, blackboards and books. \n"Our biggest enemy is illiteracy," he said. "Education is the urgent need of Afghanistan."\nAzimi said all Afghans value education and want to educate their children but political and economic conditions make it difficult to send children to school. He said he once visited a village and inquired why the children there were not in school. He was told by the village elders that only a single dilapidated school served the twenty neighboring villages. The school was eight miles from their village and parents often needed their children's help in subsistence farming.\nAfghanistan's current government, headed by Hamid Karzai, and the country's education budget is heavily dependant on international aid. Osool called on the international community and the Afghan government to invest more in Afghanistan's educational system.

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