After bloody revolution: Bringing science back to Liberian classrooms

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2009/09.01/liberiateach.html

After bloody revolution: Bringing science back to Liberian classrooms

Harvard chem professor, doctoral student share science passion with teachers


By Alvin Powell

Harvard News Office


Adam Cohen and Ben Rapoport needed materials to conduct a science experiment, but supplies were hard to come by.

Cohen, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Rapoport, an M.D./Ph.D. student at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were in the West African nation of Liberia, devastated by two civil wars that ended in 2003. Its classrooms had been stripped during the wars, leaving Liberian teachers and students with few resources beyond the desire to learn.

So Cohen and Rapoport went shopping for limes.

A short time later, their trip to the open-air market was done and they had what they needed: limes, metal nails, and copper wire. Soon they were demonstrating how to make a simple battery to Liberian science teachers, daring them to feel the admittedly small electrical current on their tongues, and offering a hands-on illustration of scientific principles that across the war-devastated nation are taught mainly through lecture and memorization.
“That’s what we want to do, teach relevant science and make it self-sustaining,” Rapoport said.

Liberia presents fertile ground for Cohen and Rapoport’s efforts. The nation, founded in 1847 by freed American slaves, was torn by two civil wars that began in 1989 and ended in 2003. The wars killed hundreds of thousands, generated tales of beheadings, torture, and other atrocities, and devastated the nation’s infrastructure.
Though the fighting has been over for several years, its effects are still apparent.
During their two weeks in Liberia in June, the two scholars were struck by the bare classrooms and stripped labs — even metal drawers were taken for sale as scrap. The years of war had seen schools abandoned, leaving nearly a generation of adults with little education. During the war, soldiers took what they needed, removing metal from buildings not damaged or destroyed in the fighting, killing livestock, and burning rubber trees for charcoal. On the palm oil plantation of the family that hosted Cohen and Rapoport, machines with key parts missing lay rusting in the underbrush while the oil harvesting — crushing and extracting the liquid from oil palm fruits — was done entirely by hand. (Read more)...

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2009/09.01/liberiateach.html

Then we say we have Government. What a disgrace mehn...

bellah, da dey government spoil dey education system like that?

No. But dey suppose to start improving the Library and laboratory of the UL. The UL is a public University own by GOL. If they can manage the University then they should privatize it KR. Dey stealing 1M from central bank and the University has nothing in the Lab. It is a disgrace.

.... I think the whole Liberia should be privatized then. De spoil wat Liberia spoil, da na small spoil o...... Liberia is so rotten that to just sit down and determine what should be a priority of GOL, it's not easy... Health da priority, education da priority, roads da priority, justice system da priority, minimizing corruption da priority, infrastructure da priority.... and the list goes on........

Putting Liberia back on the right track is something that all of us should help with. Gov't can't do it all.... see Krazzy doing what she can in her little corner with women rights, CG & d other assisting less fortunate students at the beginning of d schoo, yr; and countless other Liberians in the diaspora doing things for the country they love in their own little way .... all these little things will amount to something in the end.

... and speaking of helping, i'm also looking at doing some volunteer teaching (biology & chemistry courses) in one of the nursing schools/ universities. If some non-Liberians could come from way across the ocean to help science teachers/students here just because they wanted to show gratitude to their high school teacher who is a Liberian, how about US LIBERIANS???

ma ellen got plenty trobo...even TRC shd be privatized! my lungs o

krazzy wrote:

ma ellen got plenty trobo...even TRC shd be privatized! my lungs o

Then she should leave it come 2011. If you na able then let somebody who know how to do it try their best....Governance is not for play...That serious business because people lives are involve.......

i hear u bellah...u used to have these weekly recommendation on the next preso...wht happened?

I am trying to do a lot of vetting before posting names. I will soon begin to post my recommendation. However thank u for volunteering to teach KR. We all will have to contribute one way or the other to our common patrimony or matrimony...

It's me who said I will volunteer to teach o.... not KR.

There isa portion of the Sec. of State's speech to the Liberian Legislature that I like:

"And I think too that as a famous former governor of the state I represented for so many years (inaudible) and I know a place that many of you know well and even lived in from time-to-time, Mario Cuomo once said, “Politics is poetry, but governing is prose.” (Laughter.) You go out and campaign as I have. It’s easy to say all kinds of things. You get into this chamber, the job becomes harder. (Applause.) "

Sametta Togba wrote:

It's me who said I will volunteer to teach o.... not KR.

There isa portion of the Sec. of State's speech to the Liberian Legislature that I like:

"And I think too that as a famous former governor of the state I represented for so many years (inaudible) and I know a place that many of you know well and even lived in from time-to-time, Mario Cuomo once said, “Politics is poetry, but governing is prose.” (Laughter.) You go out and campaign as I have. It’s easy to say all kinds of things. You get into this chamber, the job becomes harder. (Applause.) "

Sorry for thinking it is KR who made the suggestion. Thank you for volunteering Sametta.