Speaking the Language of Peace

How do you teach English in a war zone? Bentley’s Robert E. McNulty seems to have found a way. Ready: Engage technology to link American students eager to teach with Afghan students eager to learn. Set: Add ingenuity, adaptability and persistence on both sides. Go: Let the curriculum evolve naturally from vocabulary to friendship.

The one-on-one tutoring program that McNulty devised offers language lessons via Skype, the Internet-based live-video service. For young Afghans, the education is critical.

“English is the language of economic development and international affairs,” says McNulty, director of programs at the campus-based Center for Business Ethics and founder of the nonprofit Applied Ethics Inc. “Jobs that connect Afghans with the world beyond their borders require high proficiency.”

Unmet Need

Though schools in Afghanistan do teach English, many students leave high school with few skills and no opportunity to improve. The lack struck McNulty when he traveled to the country in 2009. He contacted the School of Leadership, Afghanistan with a proposal: Use Skype to carry out instruction and conversations between Bentley students and Afghan students. With a green light from the school director, McNulty began organizing the initiative under the Pax Populi program of Applied Ethics.

“We are, much more than we realize, truly brothers and sisters around the world, in a deep moral and spiritual sense,” he observes. “The project aimed to find a way in which ordinary people here in the United States can reach out to ordinary people overseas, especially where there are conflicts.”

McNulty engaged Jeff Jorge, a skilled English as a Second Language instructor based in Seoul, Korea, to create guidelines for the tutoring curriculum and methods.  An Afghan student handled the coordination from Kabul, and McNulty worked through the Service–Learning Center to find Bentley students interested in teaching. The program launched in September 2010 with six pairs of participants; tutors and students are typically matched by gender in accordance with Afghan norms. 

Early Adopters

The nine-and-a-half-hour time difference requires Bentley tutors to work late at night or very early in the morning. An 11:00 p.m. start in Waltham means a fresh student in Kabul at 8:30 a.m.

The program’s early participants include Surajdai Lokenath ’11, whose family is from Guyana but has lived in the Boston area for many years.
“At first we were both nervous, because of the cultural gap,” she says of interacting with her Afghan counterpart. “But then we got to know each other and found we had a lot in common. I talked to her roommates, too. Her English got so much better. I just heard that she passed her TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language].”

Adaptability and persistence are part of the curriculum. For example, when word arrived that the Taliban might target the school for educating girls, the director moved the entire operation to a safer part of town. 

Education in Confidence

Another tutor, Nastassja Garcia ’11, calls the experience “a big reality check.”

“It’s so different to get to know a woman who every day faces challenges I’ve only read about,” says Garcia, a Global Studies major with minors in Business and Gender Studies. “When the school had to move, she said, ‘Yeah, we were evacuated but we’re fine now.’”

The pair discovered shared passions for women’s rights and education, notes Garcia. “And I learned that when you teach young women in Afghanistan, they are likely to return to their home districts and share their knowledge, so your teaching carries on.”

Carrying on – even daring to dream – is something these young Afghans seem determined to do. The school’s student coordinator, who is applying to colleges in the U.S., credits the program for building her confidence along with English skills. What of her plans for the future?

“I’d like to be governor of [her home province] Bamyan.  There is only one female governor in Afghanistan and we need more!”