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UM to train Pakistani educators

Starting in January, dozens of elementary schoolteachers and administrators from rural Pakistan will be studying at the University of Montana through an educational program sponsored by the U.S. government.

By BETSY COHEN
Missoulian

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/12/22/build/state/65-pakistani-ed.inc

The program, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, has a twofold mission: to help Pakistan bolster its educational system by improving the quality of teachers, and to help the country become more democratic by creating a greater base of educated citizenry.

Currently, for every 100 Pakistani students, only eight make it through high school, and most of the students who succeed are male, said Mehrdad Kia, director of UM’s Office of International Programs and assistant vice president for research.

The Pakistan educational system also struggles because there are no national standards for elementary school curriculums and no certification programs for teachers.

"What we and the University of Montana are doing collectively, is preparing primary school teachers and administrators to do their jobs more effectively and to give them new skills, knowledge and attitudes to increase their competency," said David Seider, program adviser with the Academy for Educational Development, the agency that is administering and overseeing the grant.

Providing there are no travel snafus, the first Pakistanis to arrive in Missoula will be 26 school administrators who are to begin a two-month program starting Jan. 12. In February, the administrators will be joined by 26 schoolteachers, primarily science and math teachers, who will arrive for a four-month program.

The Pakistanis’ arrival officially launches the first of several training sessions in a three-year effort to improve Pakistan’s educational system.

If all goes according to plan, UM and Missoula school teachers will have had a hand in teaching 120 to 150 Pakistani educators how to do their jobs better.

"They come here to receive modern, secular education, and hopefully they are sent home, taking new ideas and new technology with them in order to expose their own students and colleagues in pedagogy, new methods of teaching and the latest in the areas of their expertise," Kia said.

"Almost all of them come from rural areas of Pakistan where the population has been traditionally considered to be outside the government elite or providing for the government elite," he said. "Most of them are products of their own communities, who were born and raised in that locality and received their education there."

UM was chosen from among a pool of national applicants to host the pilot program and will be paid about $649,000 for fulfilling the grant requirements.

To help make the program succeed, 20 to 30 Missoula teachers have offered their support to assist with some of the program’s learning components, and a friendship committee comprised of Missoula residents, business owners and university representatives is organizing a series of campus and town social events for the Pakistani visitors, said Brian Lofink, special projects coordinator with UM’s Office of International Programs.

"There’s no doubt these people will experience some culture shock," Kia said.

"But we went for this grant believing that the Pakistanis would find a second home for themselves here," he said.

"Because Missoula is a community that is tolerant, and educated and interested in hosting people from different cultures, we believed this to be the ideal place for the training of these people."

Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

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