JANUARY, 1953
TEACHING SCIENCE IN AFGHANISTAN
THEfollowing extracts from a letter by Clifford S. Benton were sent to us from Dr. N. D. Cheronis, who received it. Our readers will be interested. Kabul, Afghanistan March 31, 1952 The country of Afghanistan is situated between India and Iran and is just south of the Russian border. It is wild, rugged, and barren in many plaoes; however, the high mountains which make up most of the geography are very beautiful with their snow caps and coloration. Like our neighbor, Tibet, we are surrounded by mountains, and Kabul can only he reached by narrow mountain passes. To come from Peshawar in Pakistan, which is the end of the railroad line, requires going over f i s t the Khyber Pass and then the Labadan Pass. The Khyber is protected from marauding Afridi or Waziri tribesmen by garrisoned forts on each side of the road. Suoh picturesque forts like Koolala-pushta and Bali-hissar (where the English were massacred) are also on the hills around Kabul. Tribesmen throughout the hills and mountains carry rifles and double bandoliers of bullets to protect themselves in the intertribal feuds. The Afghans are by nature a clever, resourceful people, and in spite of their impoverished environment a number of them are brilliant in physics and chemistry. The Minister of Education is himself a Ph.D. biochemist from the University of California, and his Vice-
Minister is a Ph.D. physicist. Dr. Ahu Backer at the Faculty of Science here in Kabul is doing spectrographic analysis for ozone traces in the atmosphere. Habibia. College is a government school training Afghan students in general education through the 12th grade. Since the European curriculum is employed, all students are required to study chemistry and physics in the classes from the 7th grade through the 12th grade. I teach the students chemistry and physics in the loth, l l t h , and 12th grades. In the 10th grade the curriculum covers mechanics, heat, and sound in physics, and in chemistryit covers the nonmetals andthelaws of chemistry. In the l l t h grade we t a c h light and electricity in physics and organic chemistry and metals in chemistry. In the 12th grade we review all material again which was covered in the 10th and l l t h grade and in addition present new material (for example, in Chemistry 12 we present introductory quantitative analysis, certain physical chemistry subjects, and the metals of the transition groups with emphasis on oxidation-reduction reactions). Last year we undertook to teach two simple preparations in organic chemistry involving basic techniques such as steam distillation, meltingpoints, etc., in the laboratory. Concerning the students, many of them come from mud-walled hovels or from filthy tenements made of mud and straw and overrun with mt8, scorpions, and even cobras. Malaria takes a bad toll of the students here, so it is difficult for the boys to study well in their homes. In spite of this the students are cheerful and anxious to learn.
