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ATTACHMENT A
III. Timeline History of MTSA and this Proposal
MASTER TEACHERS BY SATELLITE FOR AFGHANISTAN (MTSA) A Project of World Family Development & Educational Program Inc, a 501(c)(3) California Charitable Corp, Tax # 93-1048117 415-861-5802 800-815-8103 68 Ramona Ave, San Francisco, CA 94103 Fax 415-522-1933 www.afghan-satellite-teachers.net crs@afghanfriends.net
Kabul office c/o
NOOR Educational Center 011-93-70-280-675
Page
Note: superceded, for archival purposes only
[ Original ] PROPOSAL: MASTER TEACHERS BY SATELLITE
FOR To supply by satellite television an elementary school
& literacy education for every little girl and little boy in
Afghanistan who does not have a regular school, including in rural
areas where distance and dangerous conditions still obtain, and to provide
literacy training for adults who desire it. A PROPOSAL TO FILL, WITHIN SIX MONTHS TO A YEAR, THE UNMET NEED FOR LITERACY
AND FIRST TO THIRD
GRADE TEACHERS IN I
Problem: An
acute shortage in The
adult literacy rate in This
shortage has been well recognized. UNICEF, together with the Afghanistan
Ministry of Education, has attempted in the past two years to create “community
based schools” (CBS) in rural villages (Attachment B). There are over 2,600 of
these CBS in rural International
charities have constructed a few schools in rural villages in But
even as we write this, schools in This
tragic situation has been aptly described by Tamim Ansary: “Many groups set out to build schools in rural areas,
because they saw the struggle in Afghanistan as a battle for hearts and
minds: they saw that young people growing up unable to read and
cut off from information about the larger world were locked into a sort of
prison, defenseless against Jihadist propaganda injected into their milieu
by stateless thugs.” . . . “These are the schools now under attack by local reactionaries, by
drug lords’ henchmen, by cross-border terrorists, by stateless militant
international revolutionaries eager to drag Afghanistan (and the world) back to
an invented past, by the whole kit and
caboodle the media usually lumps under the single heading of “Taliban”—a
misnomer because it suggests an organization with headquarters and leaders,
whereas, in fact, “Taliban” increasingly refers to an ideology, a social
movement, a historical current.” (Attachment C is the full text of this Letter;
Tamim Ansary is an Afghan-American journalist and the author of West of II Review of Possible Solutions: a) More local, rural teachers and schools – but:
Training teachers takes years. Village children,
particularly girls, cannot travel to central schools because there are no
roads, no vehicles, and ample danger. And
the very act of teaching now invites attack.
b) Attract teachers from outside c) The UNICEF-organized Community Based Schools (CBS) in
rural villages – but although creative, this program is essentially just
giving books and pencils to students without the teacher to engage, motivate
and help them. d) None of these are real-time solutions. Therefore please consider the following
proposal. III The Master Teacher by Satellite Proposal: Solving Literacy and First through Third Grade
in 6 to 12 Months, and for the Next Ten Years. (1) Identify one of the best working teachers in (2) Broadcast -- for the two hours of 10:00 AM to 12 noon every
day, 6 days a week, 40 weeks a year, on one of each of the existing five satellite
channels -- a master teacher teaching, with extensive complementary
audio-visual aids, in literacy and grades one through three. This is known as “distance learning”,
and is a rapidly growing educational phenomenon throughout the world. (Broadcast time is one of the 3 largest
components of the budget for MTSA. The (3) The broadcast must adhere closely to the
prescribed curriculum as approved by the Ministry of Education, focused particularly
on reading and writing and numbers. Complimentary
to the traditional teacher, the broadcast shall include the full range of
audio-visual resources available, giving preference to locally produced
material specific to (Production of this 480 hours of
teaching content is one of the 3 largest components of the MTSA budget).
(Attachment E is an example of the preliminary script for one proposed daily 15
minute literacy segment, based on a beloved Afghan comic figure, Mulla Nasrudin,
plus pages from the official literacy curriculum. See also Budget, II-C.) (4) Each school and every home in (5) Each school room or village anywhere in (Installation of this equipment in the
villages in one of the 3 largest
components of the budget for the MTSA Project). In addition, there will be a half-time teachers’
aide to supervise the students before, during and after the instruction. Each class will be supplied written materials,
paper and pencils. (6) If as anticipated there is no school
building, the students and aide and the equipment can be accommodated in a
private house of one of the students, or a shed or a tent. In many public city schools now operating in (7) The private satellite channels will be asked
to donate two hours per day, and also be asked to contribute to the cost of
making the reception equipment available to every school or village that needs
it. Reception in the private and
government sectors to MTSA has been extraordinarily positive. Another TV channel, just getting started, has
already endorsed the MTSA and offered assistance, and government agencies have
indicated their support. (Attachment
G). Still to be negotiated, of course,
is the final approval of the Ministry of Education, which cannot occur until a
fully developed educational content is in place, which cannot occur until
funding is found for producing it. (8) The video teachers shall assign homework to
be collected by the teachers aide, and also shall suggest additional school
work for the students, such as art projects, reading books of social sciences,
natural sciences, literature and history, and, as required in Afghanistan,
religion. (9) How can the program avoid the problems of
undesirable material or even pornography being seen by children? Built into the T-V and the receiver box at
the factory shall be a chip which will guarantee that the reception on the
equipment shall be limited to the educational material prescribed in this
program. This will avoid the problems of
parental control, as well as the unauthorized use of the equipment. This will
also make the equipment not worth stealing, as it cannot be used for any other
purpose. (10) In summary, the program will deliver the literacy and
first to third grade curriculum of the Afghanistan Ministry of Education to
presently unserved students, using an innovative model of combining the
following tried and tested methodologies:
the standard curriculum, a teacher’s aide, and modern audio-visual educational
programming which will motivate, inform and instruct the students. IV
Follow-up On The Basic Program (1) The broadcasts shall be recorded, both at the studio and at
each class site. At the village or remote class site, each recorded two hour unit
can be replayed for the same or a different set of students (for example, for
older boys in the first morning class, then girls, then younger boys in the
afternoon, or for adults in the evening). (2) In the year following the first year, the daily tapes can be
edited, and the best elements saved to make an official tape version of each
class, for each day of the school year. (3) In the year following the first year, in addition to the
edited tapes, the MTSA Project or the Ministry of Education can produce manuals for
training, and instructions and materials to go with the tapes. (4) Even though there are tapes, live broadcasts and production of
new content should be continued as well, so as to allow tapes with both female
and male instructors, and Dari, Pashto and other languages. (By the time all of these variations have
been completed, it may be time to start the series again because times and the
official curriculum may have changed.)
(5) As sophistication of the technology
advances, each day’s T-V and instructional program can be stored on a web site
and ordered as desired, e.g., choosing the class for the second Tuesday in
April, a class would be able to choose a lesson in Pashto directed to boys, or
in Dari to girls, etc. (6) Because the video
instruction received will be recorded on the equipment at the village site, even
in the first year, if there are enough students, classes of girls and boys can
be taught separately, with, for example, the girls receiving the broadcast in
the morning and the boys then watching it in the afternoon. (7) For each up to 30 students
in the class, a half-time assistant teacher or teachers’ aide would be hired. These aides need not even be literate, as
their job is discipline and to follow the spoken instructions of the on-screen lessons.
(The aides may not know the material initially but will be able to learn it
with the students.) (8) At least one person in the local village or school must be found
who is sufficiently literate that simple attendance records can be kept. If at all possible, some one somewhere in the
area should also be found who is technology literate with access to a computer
and e-mail. The tech aide can fix simple
equipment problems, email questions to the central staff or to a master teacher,
and deliver answers. Common queries can
go to a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) computer web site. (9) How can the homework and tests of the students in this remote
distance learning program be corrected and graded? In a more perfect world, traveling master teachers
of the MTSA Project could travel around the country, meeting students and
aides, answering questions, and reviewing homework. That is not feasible in the present unsettled
state of the countryside. (10) But even illiterate and uneducated aides can receive homework and
sort it into a file for each student, essentially vouching for the quantity,
even if not the quality, of each student’s work. Later on, when a fax machine and satellite
cell phone can be added to the project’s equipment, the aide may be able to fax
tests to the Ministry of Education or the MTSA Project for correction, or
receive a correction sheet for correcting multiple choice tests, such as in
math. (11) As
the program gets more sophisticated, some of the techniques used by commercial
and university distance learning programs can be adopted, including direct e-mail
questioning by the students, video conferencing, and live chat between students
and a master teacher. The day’s assignments
for each day may also be stored on a web site to be accessed selectively as the
program matures. (12) The above plan works for math, reading, science, geography,
history. There are some special cases,
for example writing composition, however where other solutions are needed: (a) high tech: have the students write their papers, then
fax or scan and upload for review at a central site, or (b) low tech: use local literate
volunteers, or (c) when it becomes possible: have traveling
master teachers. (13) Parent participation: In
addition to the aides, and even though probably there is no custom of parent
participation in education, this could be developed. It would require first an educational program
directed at parents, to encourage them to participate, even if they are
themselves illiterate, in the education of their children. The school could “tax” each parent ˝ day per
semester to work at school, doing teacher aide work, or even more basic work
like building desks or providing lunch. (14) In
upper classes, variations on this plan can also be tried -- with a different
master class program for each subject, maybe adding foreign teacher volunteers
for language and computers. (15)
Possible Funding Sources – Public: United Nations, UNESCO, UNICEF, Ministry of
Education regular budget of the Government of Afghanistan, and Appeal to donor
nations which prize education, especially MTSA has already submitted one proposal
for a portion of the project to the UN Democracy Fund, which is pending A proposal by MASTER TEACHERS BY SATELLITE FOR A project of the World Family Development
& Educational Program, Inc, An IRS recognized 501(c)(3) 68 Ramona
Av, 800-815-8103 Fx
415-522-1933 crs@afghanfriends.net Project Director:
CAROL RUTH SILVER Attachments:
A. UNICEF Schools Survey for Afghanistan 2006 [see pdf file and Attachment G below] B. Community Based Schools (CBS) program of
UNICEF & Ministry of Education [see pdf file] C.
Tamim Ansary letter on Schools in D. Commitment
Letter from Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) General Director [see pdf file] E.-1 Sample
screen play for Mulla Nasrudin series [below] E- 2 Example
pages from new Literacy Textbook from F. Endorsement
Letters [see pdf file] G. Unofficial report on Community Based
Schools [below] ADDENDUM ATTACHMENTS (Not
included in the pdf file) Attachment H. Template
for eight 15-minute segments in 2 hours [below] Attachment I.
Contest for Mulla Nasrudin
scripts [below]
Note: superceded, for archival purposes only
[ Original ] BUDGET:
BUDGET Rev
5 June 2006 FOR MASTER TEACHERS BY SATELITE FOR
As Revised 23
Sept 2006 SELECTED ATTACHMENTS (see
pdf files for the additional attachments): Attachment C: Tamim Ansary letter on Schools in Attachment E.-1 Sample screen play concept for Mulla
Nasrudin series Attachment G. Unofficial report on Community Based Schools
ADDITIONAL ATTACHMENTS (Not
Attachment H. Template for 240 two-hour programs,
each of eight 15-minute segments Attachment I.
Contest for Mulla Nasrudin
scripts ============================== Attachment C:
Tamim Ansary letter on Schools in by Tamim Ansary Someone is setting fire to schools in Four
years ago But
the war kept percolating. A Out
in the countryside, the soil remains loaded with land mines. Farmers can clear
only small amounts of tillable land, since they risk limbs and children doing
this work. On these small patches, they can’t grow enough wheat to survive, so
they grow poppies. This
is the backdrop against which idealists are trying to educate rural Afghan
children, so they won’t grow up vowing to kill Americans. These are the schools now under attack by local
reactionaries, by drug lords’ henchmen, by cross-border terrorists, by
stateless militant international revolutionaries eager to drag Afghanistan (and
the world) back to an invented past, by
the whole kit and caboodle the media usually lumps under the single heading of
“Taliban”—a misnomer because it suggests an organization with headquarters and
leaders, whereas, in fact, “Taliban” increasingly refers to an ideology, a
social movement, a historical current. Whoever
they are, these Taliban are zeroing in on schools because they’re soft targets,
full of children. Over the last year,
violent assaults have forced some 200 schools to shut down in the south. A high-stakes race has been in progress in Hope for a civilized future lies, by contrast, in nourishing
enough growth, laying in enough stability, to
make joining a civil process a smart choice for sensible people. Enough people joining this process can move
the country to the opposite tipping point, to a tidal movement toward order and
a peaceful future. The
chaos mongers have an easier job because breaking anything, killing just
anyone, abets their cause. People
pledged to peace have the steeper hill to climb, as always: they must work
tirelessly for rewards that may not show for years—and convince others to join
in. This takes a stubborn optimism about
the worth of human endeavor against all
reason—in short, it takes faith. In Second,
the reconstruction effort should be
vastly expanded. Landless tenant farmers who make up the bulk of the Afghan
population worry about this year’s drought and next year’s crops, catastrophic
earthquakes and winter blizzards,
polluted water and fatal diseases felling their children. We
can support schools by surrounding them with a larger package that includes
programs to clear land mines, restore irrigation systems, replenish herds,
provide farmers with seed, build and staff clinics, and provide micro-loans for
local business ventures. Thugs who attack isolated school may promote their
violence in a clash-of-civilizations framework; let’s see how they sell their
case when any assault on a school is also an assault on clean water, bountiful
crops, flourishing herds, and healthy children. But
reconstruction must be real, not cosmetic, for this to work. The Afghan
government has no resources for this job, and neither do the little NGOs that
have built schools. Donor nations must
come in—that’s us. Let’s ask our representatives to redirect 25 May 2006
=================================== Attachment E.-1
Sample screen play concept for Mulla Nasrudin series, by MTSA staff SAMPLE SCREEN
PLAY CONCEPT: MULLA NASRUDIN AND THE
LOST LETTERS Time: 15 Minutes The Mulla, a
famous philosopher and religious scholar, rides on his little donkey along a
path in Focus is on some
of the letters which make up one or two familiar, simple words, such
as, for example, "man" and “run”, or "go" and
"stop". The children
offer to look for the letters and return them to the Mulla. He promises he will show them how
to read and write each letter. But wherever the
letters have fallen, they begin to grow, and grow, and grow, until they
are taller than a child. So the
kids need 2 or 3 to cooperate in hauling the letters back, one by one. The Mulla scolds the letters, puts his hand
on the top of each letter, and squishes it to the ground. He then picks it up and puts it back into his
pack. This
scenario gives the opportunity for slapstick-type comic events, as well as
for a lesson in cooperation, and as well keeping the image of each
letter in front of the eyes of the children so that they can memorize it.
As to writing
the letters, the Mulla addresses the 3 boys and, at the same time, looks straight into the
camera and addresses the audience as if they were in the studio. He gives each of the 3 boys a pad of paper
and shows them how to write the letters.
Then he asks them to write the letters 3 times, while he is
watching them. He turns to the kids in the TV audience and asks them also to
write the letters 3 times. He asks them
also to promise to write 3 lines of letters as homework until the
next day. (Compare here
the Blue’s Clues
children’s series where the “Steve” character addresses the video audience
directly.) Once the Mulla
has found all of his lost letters, and the children have written them
three times, the Mulla gets on his donkey and leaves. A final comic
bit: on the rear end of the donkey, the children have written the letters.
--------------------------------------- In another attachment
is one of the little Mulla Nasrudin tales which might be the theme for another
program, a story called "His need is greater than mine." A crow stole the soap from the Mulla's wife
as she was washing the Mulla’s cloak, and the Mulla’s response was: “ Look how
black is his cloak – his need for soap is much greater than mine.” This offers
the common words soap, hand, fly, etc., and a lesson about charity
and forgiveness. The letters could drop
off the soap and float down to earth like a kite, or else perhaps splash into
the wash basin. ---------------------------------------- Also in another attachment
are pages from the newest ============================================= Attachment G. Unofficial
report on Community Based Schools REPORT 1 April 2006
by staff of MTSA on COMMUNITY BASED SCHOOLS: A UNICEF INITIATIVE WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF TO BRING SCHOOL TO VILLAGE CHILDREN WHO CANNOT GO TO SCHOOL When UNICEF Afghanistan set
up a Regional Team for the Central Provinces of Afghanistan, one of the top
priorities was the challenge of finding a way for girls in rural areas to
obtain the basic education which is their right, and which is taken for granted
in urban and more developed areas of Afghanistan and the world. Actively denied the right to
learn during the Taliban era, the girls are still being denied education
because of safety concerns: kidnappers, land mines, suicide bombers, roving
terrorists. What parent would let a
little girl walk for hours every day from a rural village to a Provincial
school house? Even if there was a
Provincial school within walking distance?
And mostly there are not any such schools. Boys as well as girls in the
rural areas are being kept within the confines of their homes and villages, for
even though they are continuing to lose precious years of learning, at least
they are not losing their limbs, or their lives. So
if the children cannot go to school, can school come to the children? In 2003, UNICEF helped the
Government of Afghanistan, under its “Healthy Schools Initiative,” to establish
the first of what are now some 2,688 Community Based Schools in rural villages in
The UNICEF Task Force
published the criteria for establishing new Community Based Schools (CBS) as
follows: -
CBS should be
considered in places where girls and boys do not have access to formal schools
or NGO [Non-Governmental Organization] run schools because of distance. -
The distance
should be at least four kilometers from formal school or the distance between
the formal school and the village is not safe.
-
The community
should be interested and show readiness for establishing CBS. -
Number of
children 7-12 years should be above 30 children in the village. (The number of children = population of the
village X 0.20.) -
The priority
should be given to girl children. -
The community
should provide the learning space and identify the teacher for CBS and more
emphasis should be put on female teachers.
-
The community
should ensure the security of the children and the school. -
The community
should support the teacher. -
Written
agreements should be signed between DEO and the community council. -
The
community/Shura should actively participate in school activities. -
The identified
teacher should be committed to teach the children. -
DEO should
collect information about the NGOs working the district. Each village Of the first set of
approximately 200 Community Based Schools in One key element of the
Community Based Schools program is its adherence to the established and
approved curriculum of the Afghanistan Ministry of Education. This will permit children enrolled in the
program to move on to regular schools when that opportunity comes. In the meantime, Community
Based Schools are filling a great need.
Although they are a small (but a rapidly growing) portion of the estimated 5.1 million children enrolled
in school in “Every child has the right to learn, and no child
learns alone.” UNICEF:
Advance Humanity. ======================================= Attachment H. Template
for 240 two-hour programs, each of eight
15-minute segments TEMPLATE FOR 240 TWO HOUR PROGRAMS FOR MASTER TEACHERS BY SATELLITE FOR Summary: One minute: Title Two minutes: Introduction by a Teacher Fifteen minutes: Mulla Nasrudin Literacy Show Twenty-two minutes: Fifteen minutes: Elementary school level science experiments Fifteen minutes: Afghans Around the World Fifteen minutes: History of Science, Computers, and Useful
English Fifteen minutes: Health Fifteen minutes: Open slot. Two minutes: The teacher Two minutes: Mulla Nasrudin One minute: Credits Total
running time: 120 minutes ================================= One minute:
Title, plus any introductory material required. Two minutes:
Introduction by a teacher in traditional school room setting,
with a blackboard behind. The teacher
will welcome kids and introduce this film or video program as schooling, not to
be confused with entertainment. The
children will hear from this authoritative figure the rules of schooling, to
follow directions, be quiet, etc. Fifteen minutes:
Mulla Nasrudin Literacy Show: This quite comic program will
feature Mulla Nasrudin, his donkey, his wife, some children on screen and an
audience of children not seen. The Mulla
will teach letters and numbers to children in The basic idea will be repeated in numerous scripts and
with numerous variations: The Mulla
travels on his donkey with saddlebags containing the words, letters, and
numbers, which the children need to learn.
In various ways he loses the letters or words or numbers, and must
search for them, with the help of the children.
Mulla Nasrudin is a historic comic figure in Afghan lore, and he is both
a teller of jokes, a doer of comic routines, and sometimes the subject of
jokes. The program should be as comic and amusing and
interesting as possible to engage the children, and at the same time to teach
them their letters and numbers. One word
or phrase will be emphasized in each episode.
In addition to the direct literacy message, the Mulla
will deliver one message per episode about a virtue proclaimed in Islamic
ethics, such as: charity, cleanliness,
respect for elders, etc. The donkey may talk in Dari or Pashto, or make donkey
sounds, or be silent. The wife of the
Mulla will be portrayed as literate, wise, and a warm helper for the Mulla in
his teaching of the children. The
children will be around 6 years old, and there will be two or three boys in one
group, and two or three girls in a separate group. In addition to the words in his saddlebags, the Mulla in
some episodes may display and utilize the two books which he also carries, one
being the Koran and the other “The Big Book of Everything Else.” The Big Book will have an alphabetical index,
to teach the children that with the magic of letters, they can find out any
kind of information they may desire, and have access to everything in the
world, from A for airplanes to Z for zoo animals. This Mulla Nasrudin series was conceived by MTSA, and is
a totally new series. The scripts for it
are not yet written. A script contest
has just been announced, seeking to have scripts written by a variety of
persons, to fulfill the need for 240 scripts for the 240 individual daily
programs. Twenty-two minutes:
In the tradition of Sesame Street Workshop Productions,
they will be extremely helpful to teach young children about colors, shapes,
music, counting and time, as well as directly teaching them the alphabet and
words. Sesame Street episodes also
usually include lessons on general good behavior for children, such as
cooperation, tidiness, etc. The availability of these episodes is extremely
fortuitous, as they will already have been tested for acceptance in an Islamic
country, and as the use of Arabic letters is the same or very similar for Dari
and Pashto. Fifteen minutes:
Elementary school level science experiments: Under the supervision of Camilla Berry,
a California teacher of science and consultant on the teaching of science at
the elementary school level, a series of episodes will be created to explain
how things work and grow, observation, trial and error and other elementary
science and pre-science concepts. Each
of the experiments will be done by a teacher on screen, perhaps with children
on screen, but will use only such materials as children in the rural areas of
Afghanistan could themselves obtain, such as a stone and a board to study
levers, or a series of seeds to explore how seeds germinate, or a pan of
boiling water to study steam. In this science segment, literacy will
also be taught, particularly the numbers but also one word per episode, so that
the basic objective of literacy for the children will be furthered in each
segment. This segment will not be comic,
but hopefully will be interesting and fun, so as to keep the children's
interest. Scripts for this segment are already in the planning
stage, with an initial pilot and an outline for the first ten episodes already
being worked upon. Fifteen minutes:
Afghans Around the World.
This 15 minute segment will begin with the story of Afghans traveling
within Literacy will have a role in these segments also,
particularly in trying to teach how to read and write the place names of Scripts for this segment are in the planning stage. Fifteen minutes:
History of Science, Computers, and Useful English. This segment will attempt to answer the
question: how do we solve problems? First we guess, then we use trial and error,
then we count, then we write down the answer.
It will emphasize some of the most important Islamic contributions to
science, particularly in the middle ages, including the creation of the concept
of a symbol representing zero. From this
will particularly come the notion of counting, and counting machines, such as
the abacus, the ten key adding machine, and eventually, the computer. The basic elements of the computer, using zero and one as
its counting device, and all that the computer represents from that very basic
beginning, will be explored. English words will be offered, verbally, not in writing,
in order to give the children an opportunity to know some of the English words
they will need to operate computers. Literacy will also be advanced in this segment, by
focusing on the written version of the numbers, and on at least one word or set
of letters. The scripts for this segment have not yet been begun, as
they need to be coordinated with the science experiment segment. Fifteen minutes:
Health. This segment will
offer information for children on nutrition, exercise, brushing teeth, boiling
water, washing cups, and other elements of daily living, as well as attempt to
address psychological issues for children in a war zone. It will address literacy by choosing one word that is
relevant to these elements and focusing on it.
This segment will also deal with children and adults with
disabilities, particularly amputees, and try to convey the message that
discrimination against these children and adults should not occur. Scripts for this segment have not been outlined yet, and
we are looking for a group of medical, psychological and environmental experts
who would like to take on this project. Fifteen minutes:
Open slot. This segment
is still open, because we hope that there are already in existence appropriate
and useable children's programs (although we have not yet been able to find any
with some preliminary research). The
existence of such programming, however, we hope will yet appear, whether from Two minutes: The teacher returns
in order to give a closing to the activities of the day, not a summary of the
lessons but a repeat of the expectations -- that the children will have
listened carefully, and that they will
practice writing the things which they learned in the day's program either
before they go back to their homes or at their homes in the evening. Two minutes: Mulla Nasrudin
returns for the last 2 minutes, with
some kind of comic antic and to remind the children to come back the next time
for the next program. One minute: Credits. With the mountains of Total running time:
120 minutes. The following are notes
to the above: 1. The order in which these segments are presented is flexible
and perhaps should be changed, for example, Mulla Nasrudin should perhaps go
first and the teacher introduction second at the beginning. 2. We have attempted to move from the simplest to the more
complex in the programming, because we think that perhaps we may lose the
youngest children's interest toward the end of the two hours. One possibility is to move the Health segment
to the middle and start it off with an exercise component of five or seven
minutes. 3. We
have made a strong effort to have a literacy component in every segment and to
emphasize and coordinate it. To this end
the plan is to use the 288 pages of the text book of the Afghanistan Ministry
of Education, Department of Functional Literacy, which was recently published,
available to guide the segments of the 240 daily programs. Correlating the Master Teachers video
programs with this textbook is very important to the success of this program,
among other reasons because it will permit children who have completed the
video course to apply for certification of their education so as to allow them
to transfer to a regular school when a school becomes available to them. end ================================= Attachment I.
Contest for Mulla Nasrudin
scripts MASTER TEACHERS BY SATELLITE
FOR Announces a SCRIPT CONTEST calling for 15 minute
scripts for the Mulla Nasrudin Literacy Show In Dari, Pashto, English or
German, Submit all contest entries
to: Master Teachers by Satellite for
Afghanistan is seeking to supply by satellite television in Afghanistan an
elementary school and literacy education, kindergarten through third grade, for
every little girl, and little boy, who does not have access to a regular
school, and also to provide literacy for adults who desire it. The Mulla Nasrudin Literacy Show will be an integral part
of the two hours per day (6 days a week, 40 weeks a year) of the satellite
programming, in both Dari and Pashto. Must be as comic as the original: The real Mulla Nasrudin lived during the
Middle Ages in Afghanistan and Central Asia, a wandering comic figure with his
undersized donkey, both making jokes and being the subject of jokes, returning
always to his beloved wife in his rural village. He appears in innumerable comic fables, known
to all Afghans. The script can include
sight gags, jokes, slapstick, rhymes, short unaccompanied song, etc., designed
to appeal to children, 5 to 8 years old, and where possible, to be interesting
to their older family members also.
Nothing sexy, obscene, violent, discriminatory, or cruel should be included. The basic script outline:
As Mulla Nasrudin travels around in
Immediate release – Mulla Nasrudin Script
Contest -- More info contact: English - Carol
Ruth Silver, 800-815-8103 or myersflat@aol.com Dari - Wahida
Noorzad, 925-600-9991 or wnoorzad@sbcglobal.net Pashto - info@afghanfriends.net German - Sosan
Arman, 714-288-0507 or sosanarmon@yahoo.com The characters: The
Mulla, a portly senior citizen, with a large turban and beard. His wise wife, about the same age and shape.
The donkey, who can be portrayed as talking, or not. The
donkey can be a cartoon or a hand puppet, or real. Both the Mulla and his wife can read and
write. The children are real and some or
all should be off-camera. The lesson: Each
script should focus on teaching no more than 1 to 3 small words and the letters
that they contain, plus one of the numbers one through ten. If possible, the script content should be
tied to one or two pages from the new
literacy text book being distributed in Dari and Pashto by the Minister of
Functional Literacy of the Afghanistan Ministry of Education (pages of this
book will be posted on the web on 1 October 2006 along with the official
contest rules.) Islamic values: Each
script should also include by example one positive Islamic ethical lesson for
children, such as giving charity, working hard, finishing the job, helping others,
honoring parents, etc. FIRST
PRIZE: Your script WILL be produced
and you will be given authors credits along with producer, director and actors,
PLUS a round trip economy fare ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan, PLUS the
opportunity to have an Internship for 6 months at Ariana Afghanistan Television
in California or Afghan Film in Kabul. SECOND
PRIZE: Your script MAY be produced at
the option of MTSA, PLUS the opportunity to have an Internship for 6 months at
Ariana THIRD PRIZE: Your script MAY be produced at the option of
MTSA, PLUS the opportunity to have an Internship for 3 months at Ariana Tax deduction: Every
submission will be acknowledged and WILL be considered for production. Expenses incurred in creating a script (or a
pilot of it on DVD) cannot be reimbursed
but can be taken as a tax deduction because Master Teachers by Satellite for
Afghanistan is a project of a charity with a Sec. 501(c)(3) tax determination
under the Internal Revenue Code. The contest: The
contest runs until 1 December 2006, when the judges will pick first, second and
third place winners from all entries submitted by midnight that date. The official contest rules will be posted on
the web on 15 October 2006. Decisions of
the judges will be final. By submitting
a script, the author donates to Master Teachers by Satellite for Submission: Entries may be submitted in, Dari, Pashto,
German or English, preferably by email to Mulla@afghanfriends.net. If email is not possible, submit by fax to
415-522-1933 or a hard copy by postal mail to 68 Ramona Av, [End] Master Teachers by Satellite for Afghanistan
Contact us at crs@afghanfriends.net
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