WHWV provides schools with their first books.

September 18, 2006
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When school was out here for the summer, I can’t say that I was aware of more children running around during the day than before summer vacation. During the school year there always seem to be swarms of children around, regardless of schools being in session. At first I thought their presence was a sure sign of truant students; I learned later that it could be a sign of teacher truancy.

Teachers here are paid the equivalent of about $40 per month. It’s not just poor pay; it’s less than a living wage. Teacher families would starve if teachers didn’t have other alternatives: gardening, raising livestock, working for daily wages. Teachers, like most other working adults in Lao, are usually members of extended households consisting of two or three generations living together. Everyone throws their meager wages into the collective pot, helping everyone within the household to get by: share and share alike.

To compound the dilemma of low wages, teachers have to weather periodic dry spells when the government declares a cash flow crisis and simply stops paying them. Then some teachers, less in retaliation than out of necessity, stop coming to work while they pursue other means of putting food on the family table.

Lao teachers employ a limited repertoire of teaching techniques. When teachers are in front of their class, that’s exactly where you will find them: in front of the class. They rarely move more than an arm’s length away from the blackboard that is a fixture on the front wall of their classroom. Regardless of what is happening in the far corners of the classroom, teachers remain rooted within the tiny piece of real estate surrounding the board.

The blackboard is a black board — not slate or high-tech composite materials that welcome chalk or felt pens. We’re talking about a board that someone painted black. Students often have their own black boards: smaller, tablet-sized pieces of painted wood on which they copy whatever the teacher has written on the larger board. Teachers usually have chalk; students commonly have only a crumbling piece of limestone. Teachers clean their board with a rag; students invariably use a forearm or shirtsleeve. Only in relatively affluent communities do students come to school provisioned with paper, pencils, and pens.

Commonly, the blackboard is the source of all written language within the room. Ninety-five per cent of schools in Laos have no books — no textbooks, no reading books, no library books. No books at all. Much of a teacher’s day is spent writing on the board; much of the students’ day is spent dutifully copying what is written before them. If students learn to read (and many do not), it’s from studying their teacher’s script. In order to provide beginning readers with practice, teachers must hand-write every word of every piece of chosen literature.

Teachers complain that it is burdensome to write long passages on the board, and I don’t doubt that it is. It would be tiring even if the teacher had a suitable writing surface, but unlike slate, the painted boards don’t receive the chalk easily. And then, the board won’t easily give up the chalk marks when they need to be erased. Forget washing the board. Remember, it’s just a wooden board.

Public schools serve both boys and girls. Within the classroom students are usually separated: boys on one side, girls on the other. One half of the room always seems busier and noisier than the other. Guess which side.

Most schools function in the fashion of America’s legendary one-room schools, with students of diverse ages studying within the same room. Villages large enough to justify having two or more teachers will separate the students into groups of older and younger students. Recently I chatted with Mr. Nua Doksinoun, a teacher from Sop Phene Village. This fall Mr. Doksinoun will be the lone teacher in his school; his class will have an enrollment of 42 students ages 6 through 12, a class size and composition that would stagger most American teachers. It’s no wonder that teachers in his situation refrain from attempting any innovative teaching techniques.

For several years, my wife and I have raised money to provide Lao schools with books. We work in cooperation with the National Library of Laos to provide “Book Box Libraries” to needy schools. The name says just about all there is to tell. We have wooden boxes constructed by a carpenter in Vientiane. Then the staff at the National Library fills the boxes with books: something on the order of 150 titles. The boxes close tightly to protect their precious content from dust and moisture. They are designed to open fan-like, creating an attractive display of books on built-in shelves.

The boxes are quite sturdy. As my grandmother would say, “It takes two men and a boy to lift one.” I’ve never subjected one to a crash test, but I’m confident they can survive rough handling. They have to be sturdy, because getting them to remote villages is no cake walk; the boxes may travel on the top of a bus, in the bed of a pickup, on the back of a pony, or may simply be carried by hand down the road or up the mountainside. I once handed a Book Box over to two teachers who had arrived on a motorcycle to meet me. To get their box home, they had to appeal to a truck driver who was delivering grain to their village. The driver agreed and drove off with the box teetering atop a mountain of bulging rice bags. I visited their village later in the week and saw that the library had arrived no worse for wear.

One of my favorite memories of Laos occurred when we were delivering a Book Box Library to a village in Hua Phan Province, up north near the border with Viet Nam. The school served a large village and had an enrollment of several hundred students. The head teacher told me that his school already possessed the start of a library. With some pride he informed me that several years prior to our gift, a Japanese charitable organization donated reading books.

I was momentarily alarmed, thinking that our efforts were duplicating the work of another charitable group, and that a more needy school might have to do without books while this school enjoyed two donations. I asked the teacher how many books the Japanese had donated and he immediately gave me an exact count: 48 books. Considering the school’s enrollment of over 400 students, I judged our gift to be appropriate.

The arrival of books in this village was cause for great excitement. The normal school day was interrupted for an afternoon of celebration. A children’s librarian from the National Library led students in songs, poems, and movement activities, all related to stories contained in the new books. Through an interpreter, I told the assembled students the fable of the Little Mouse and the Lion, chosen because it afforded me the opportunity to ham it up and perform outrageous sound effects that I hoped would transcend language barriers.

While the students continued the celebration out-of-doors, the school board president invited his guests from America into the school office. Parents placed heaping trays of boiled sweet potatoes on the tables before us. Feeling no need for discretion or inhibition, the board president produced a bottle of Lao whiskey and poured celebratory shots for everyone in the room. Teachers, administrators, board members, and guests all exchanged repeated toasts.

The books chosen for inclusion in the Book Box Libraries are heavily weighted toward folk tales and legends, considered safe fare for students. This being the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, officials of the People’s Revolutionary Party keep a watchful eye on a school’s curriculum, even though the government provides no financial aid to schools (beyond teacher salaries) to support the approved course of study.

Appropriately, the books we donate are printed in Lao, the language of instruction for all schools in all villages — even those in which students speak a minority language in their homes. (Often, when schools in America learn about the absence of books in Laos, they are inspired to conduct book drives with the hope that donated books can be shipped to needy schools. We always remind American students that beginning readers in Laos need books in their own language.)

Most teachers who receive Book Box Libraries have never taught from books and have never taught reading skills from printed material. The Lao teachers I know all learned to read from a teacher’s script on a blackboard; few had books at home to practice the skills learned at school.

The new experience of having books in their classroom can create stress for teachers who are rooted in old habits. Some grow frustrated trying to keep order in the classroom when student excitement over books breaks out. Dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists feel most secure when students are sitting quietly, fully occupied transcribing words from the board. Many Lao teachers are most comfortable when all students are doing the same thing at the same time. They find having a group of students occupied with one book, while other groups are occupied with different titles, to be disconcerting. It certainly isn’t the way they themselves were taught! And of course, teachers are always concerned over accepting responsibility for the precious new books. Teachers who receive the libraries have even been known to ask, “Is it all right if I let the students handle the books?”

To put teachers at ease and to address their concerns, we have felt the need to provide teachers with training in how to teach from books and how to maintain the libraries in good order. When we delivered the last batch of library boxes, we combined our efforts with those of Peter Whitelsey, a school librarian from Sacramento, who has been distributing libraries to schools for many years. Combined, the California and Wisconsin gifts justified bringing teachers from twenty schools together for a day of training conducted by the children’s librarian from the National Library. Over the course of a one-day workshop, the librarian communicated a contagious level of enthusiasm about teaching with books. She modeled for teachers how they could enrich and extend the literature with related song, dance, and storytelling.

The librarian addressed all the practical concerns such as harnessing student excitement, keeping track of books on loan, and devising teaching plans in which different groups use different books. Acknowledging that the books would eventually grow worn, she taught teachers how to make simple repairs.

Once at my school in Wisconsin, I was close to signing a contract to order expensive playground equipment to be paid for with money earned through chili suppers and candy sales. I sought reassurance about the equipment’s durability, so I asked the sales person, “Can children wear this equipment out?” The sales rep replied, “Over time, yes. But isn’t that what you want? Aren’t you hoping to provide something that kids will want to use? Won’t you be disappointed if ten years from now the equipment looks brand new?” I take the same attitude toward the books in the library: it’s far better that children get their hands on the books and wear them out than for the teacher to try to preserve the books in mint condition, using them solely for reading aloud to the class.

In the three years that my wife and I have been working with the National Library to coordinate the purchase and delivery of Book Box Libraries, schools, churches, service clubs, and individual donors in the greater Wausau area have sent 23 libraries to as many villages. Our next batch, hopefully 15 libraries in all, will go to schools in the resettlement village here on the Nakai plateau. Each of the villages here is slated to get a new school to replace an older building that will be submerged in a reservoir when the new dam opens. Unfortunately, the offer to replace schools stops at replacing buildings and furniture. Since schools didn’t have books prior to their move, no one feels obligated to provide them now.

One of the goals we have is to work with the National Library to expand the number of titles included in the boxes and to include books that meet the unique needs of individual communities. For instance, the libraries here on the Nakai Plateau should include books on nutrition, health and hygiene. Certainly they should include titles that teach students how to remain safe when living in close proximity to bombs and landmines. I’m ever confident that a book can enrich a student’s life; here in Nakai, a book could save a life.

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