Dark times, bright minds: UMass leads way in teaching Afghanistan's future teachers
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A University of Massachusetts educator is about to reap rewards for years spent establishing the first master's degree program Afghanistan has seen in at least 30 years.
As the program's first graduating class prepares for a March 10 commencement, Joseph B. Berger said he feels a sense of pride in the 22 Afghan students set to receive master's degrees in education, as well as in the people of Afghanistan.
But behind that, there is worry.
Though the Taliban - a group of hard-line Islam extremists - was overthrown in 2002, insurgent violence continues in Afghanistan, marked by the deployment of 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan and two major insurgent attacks in Kabul.
All of Berger's work over the past several years - the political wrangling, securing funds, scouring the country for a diverse group of students, gathering supplies and guiding faculty - could be destroyed by violence or a failed American initiative. The U.S. government-funded graduate program was designed to prepare educators with advanced skills, something the nation lacks at the collegiate level. Many Afghans with graduate degrees earned them decades ago or obtained them in a foreign country, Berger said.
"That's always a constant challenge," said Berger, chairman of the UMass educational policy research and administration department, reached in Amherst. "As much success as we've had, we have to worry at what point everything unravels."
Minds and hearts
Even as Taliban militants attacked a luxury hotel in downtown Kabul Friday, killing nine people and wounding 25, Kabul Education University students are preparing for commencement. Students - half of whom are women - will wear black robes and mortarboards, hear graduation speeches from a selected student and the minister of higher education and receive their diplomas, Berger said. Unlike the American graduation, the familiar "Pomp and Circumstance" march will not be played. Excerpts from the Quran will open the festivities.
"This is a really big deal there," said Berger, who will attend. The nation needs more educators to rebuild the nation's academic system, he argues.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has been working with Kabul Education University and the Afghanistan Ministry of Higher Education to create and maintain a graduate degree program in education through a partnership funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The agency has a variety of educational missions in Afghanistan as well as in other developing countries. In 10 years, Berger said, the program will graduate 1,000 Afghan students.
In the face of violence, promoting knowledge among Afghans is vital, graduates of the UMass-Afghanistan mission say. As Mohammad Tariq Habibyar, a student graduating in March, puts it, "the fate and future of Afghanistan depends on the education of open-minded and native Afghans."
Without an educated population willing to invest in the nation, creating jobs and pushing the boundaries of invention, Afghanistan cannot hope to pull itself out of poverty and obtain political stability, he said. Afghanistan has a 40 percent unemployment rate and a 28 percent adult literacy rate, according to the CIA World Fact Book.
"A major positive and promising change I see in Afghanistan is in the increase of educational opportunities for Afghans," said Habibyar in an email sent from his hometown of Herat, in the western part of the nation.
UMass role
The graduate education program, which has now enrolled its third group of students, was so successful that USAID commissioned UMass to establish an advanced education program in medicine. Berger said creating master's degree programs where there are none and in a dangerous place has been difficult, but necessary for the overall success of Afghanistan.
Between January 2006 and December 2008, 1,153 attacks on education targets were reported, according to the United Nations' Refugee Agency. These attacks mostly took place at rural grade schools and included the damaging or destruction of schools by arson, grenades, mines and rockets; threats to teachers and officials delivered in letters or verbally; the killing of students, teachers and other education staff; and looting. From January 2009 to June 2009, the most recent information available, another 123 schools were targeted by insurgents.
"One of the goals of the insurgency is to keep this progress from being made. If we say the effort is not worth it, then that is a self-fulfilling prophecy," Berger said. "What we are doing is planting the seeds, laying the foundation to be built on. What we're doing is way too big a challenge for a limited number of years. Now Afghanistan has to go and transform it, carry it on."
USAID invitation
UMass' relationship with Afghanistan higher education extends back to shortly after the Taliban regime was toppled by America and allies in 2002. Encouraged by the literacy work UMass was doing in Malawi, a landlocked nation in southern Africa, USAID asked UMass to establish a similar program in Afghanistan, Berger said.
Later, USAID was collecting applications from universities and educational institutions interested in establishing master's degree programs in education in Kabul. The request for proposals referred to UMass' work with "rapid literacy" as a program to emulate, said Berger, who took the inclusion as a sign that the university should apply.
"I thought we should probably bid on it since we were mentioned ... and already working in Afghanistan," he said, "but it was such a big project, we needed some partners." UMass teamed up with Indiana University to provide English language training support for the project. Berger has been involved in all aspects of developing the program and has made two to three trips to Afghanistan annually in the last several years.
Afghanistan's higher education system suffered under the control of communist (1979-89) and the Taliban (1996-2001) regimes, Habibyar said. Neither government invested in the professional development of the faculty or the university infrastructure. Both used higher education as a place to spread their own ideologies. Practical skills were not the focus of higher education.
"The completion of the first master's program in Kabul ... has been a positive and optimistic change and I hope this program will extend to Herat and other provinces as well," Habibyar said.
In 2007, Berger, along with former UMass professor Bonnie Mullinix and graduate students Frank McNerney, Kimberly Parekh and Halona Agouda, began work on a new master's program for Afghanistan. They were joined by Wahid Omar in the country.
The goal was to create a master's degree program that could produce professors who could then train other professors - and increase the number of educators in the nation.
The program is meant to "enhance the expertise, professional and leadership capacities of faculty members who will play key roles in educating future educators, thus building the capacity within Afghanistan to improve," said Harry Edwards, acting press director for USAID, in an email to the Gazette.
But there were many challenges.
"Where to start?" Berger asked, when invited to speak about obstacles to the program. "Many were internal political challenges," he said.
For starters, which of Afghanistan's approximately 35 universities would host the first master's degree program in 30 years? Kabul was chosen, said Berger, because the government of Afghanistan wants to develop the capital as an educational hub.
Next the team, along with Afghan politicians and academics, spent four months drafting a proposal for the program, which included details such as course requirements, projects due, and academic and admission standards.
In the program, students learn about teaching principles, educational psychology, professional development, curriculum design, applied research in education and how to assess educational progress.
Finding students for the program wasn't difficult. Kabul Education University received three times more applications than there are spaces in the program, Berger said. However, developers wanted a diverse group representing men and women from all parts of Afghanistan. Many of the initial applicants were men living in or near Kabul.
"We wanted a to be sure we got good regional representation," Berger said. "We also wanted to attract women. Like any diverse society, there is a whole range of the values and attitudes about women and their roles, but we couldn't leave them out."
Then came the procurement of materials and improvements of the physical space needed for the program. The program hit a snag when developers were searching for textbooks and other educational materials needed for classes.
Virtually none of the needed reading materials was written in Dari or Pashto, the two main languages of Afghanistan. They needed translators, and Iran is the place to go for such requests, Berger said. But due to political tensions between Iran and America, the nation declined to help. However, developers eventually found translators willing to put educational pedagogy into Afghan languages.
"It was politics. We're a U.S.-funded project. We couldn't get material from Iran," Berger said.
Physical space was also altered. Developers renovated the university's library to include more books and working areas. Students were given laptops and taught how to use them. Basic writing skills were taught.
"In Afghanistan they had lacked formal education for so long. It's a country with a strong oral tradition anyway, so we had to work with students on writing and how to cite sources, things like that," Berger said.
Two years on
The first class for the graduate program was held on March 25, 2008, Edwards said. These students will be the ones graduating in March, attending the commencement ceremony along with six other Afghan graduate students who completed their degree work at UMass Amherst through the university's Higher Education Program.
Two more classes, of 22 students each, have started the graduate degree program in Kabul. Although classes are taught now by a mix of American and Afghan professors, Berger said soon, as more students graduate from the program, classes will be taught by an all-Afghan faculty.
"Everyone wants to be the person to stand on the shoulders of others and get credit. We go into a project like this recognizing that we are lending the shoulder for others to stand on," Berger said. "Over time this will build something much bigger than anything we could accomplish ourselves."
