Foreign Service Officer: ORAL ASSESSMENT STUDY GUIDE

TO:
FROM:
SUBJECT:
Members of the Working Group on Special Projects
Peace Corps Office Manager – Todd Kowalski
Public School Reform (K12)
Peace Corps Director Gudrun DeSouliers had planned to attend your meeting today but has been
unavoidably detained. She asked me to pass on the following information on a public school
reform project proposed by Minister of Education Ibrahim Kittab and urges you to fund this
worthy project fully.
Widespread illiteracy is one of Kuman's most difficult development challenges and a poor basis
for its emerging representative government. About 90% of Kumanis are illiterate. Existing
schools are under-funded, overcrowded and inadequately staffed. Urban schools must rely on
grossly outdated textbooks and poorly prepared teachers. Rural schools are controlled by
Januban fundamentalists.
The Minister plans to establish 50 new rural primary schools and 12 regional high schools in the
next year. High schools will draw the best students from the primary schools. Old textbooks
will be replaced with apolitical textbooks developed by Western-educated Kumanis, with help
from two Peace Corps experts. The Government will give full scholarships for the top 10
percent of high-school graduates to attend Asima’s National University or universities abroad, in
return for teaching in public schools for two years after graduation. The Peace Corps will also
provide volunteer English teachers, while the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs will provide its information and educational programs for use in the new public
schools
The total cost of the project is $495,000. The World Bank and the United Kingdom are
contributing $205,000 and $100,000, respectively, to train and hire new teachers. We have been
asked to provide $190,000: $115,000 for the purchase of building materials for school
construction (local villagers will provide the labor) and another $75,000 for the publication of
new textbooks.
Political Counselor Hedwig Bigg says that Kuman’s democratic experiment might fail unless the
current Government meets rising public demands, across the political spectrum, for education
reform. In particular, the fundamentalist extremists’ growing appeal among the educated young
is due to frustration with an educational system that does not prepare them for careers in a freemarket
economy or the bureaucracy of new democratic institutions. An educated electorate
would not only provide a better basis for democracy but could lessen support for religious
extremism, particularly in rural areas, by giving all Kumanis, for the first time, a chance at higher
education and economic advancement.
Public Affairs Officer Art Pressman adds that our public diplomacy efforts have been severely
limited by Kuman's poor school system, the population's limited contact with the outside world,
and still lingering anti-Western Marxist leanings or, increasingly, fundamentalist Januban