A panel of Dartmouth undergraduates, just back from a term of teaching in Marshallese public schools, offered personal accounts of their trip last night, along with Marshall Islands Ambassador to the U.S. Banny de Brum, and First Secretary at the Embassy, Kristina Stege.
Last year, the College developed an off-campus, leave-term internship program on the Marshall Islands sponsored by the education department.
The seven students who attended were Mara Tieken '01, Jessica Souke '01, Diandra Benally '00, Kelly Hsieh '01, Meredith Kessler '01, Matthew Shaffer '01 and Michael Holmes '01.
Located in the heart of Oceania, the Marshall Islands occupy an area about the size of Washington D.C., halfway in-between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea in the North Pacific Ocean. British Captain William Marshall named the Islands in 1788, as he sailed through the area while transporting convicts between Botany Bay and Cathay.
After many years under Spanish, German, and Japanese control, the Islands were ceded to the U.S. following World War II. Today, a Compact of Free Association exists between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands, although this agreement will expire in 2001.
The U.S. provides roughly $65 million in annual aid, which amounts to about 70 percent of the GNP. Despite this foreign aid, the island nation remains extremely impoverished, with many geographical and physical limitations.
"It is very difficult in terms of educating kids in grades one through eight with schools that have no electricity or running water," Stege said.
The ambassador stressed that the nation is doing all it can to improve the economic situation with its burgeoning fishing and tourism industries, yet it continues to struggle to create tangible income.
"We're exploring a lot of options, but we have so little resources in our small country," de Brum said. "We're in the process of coming up with a short-term as well as a long-term economic plan."
Dartmouth students struggled to grasp the lack of educational funding and teaching.
"My whole framework had to change. My kids didn't even know what a noun was," Tieken said.
Compulsory education on the islands begins at age six and ends following the completion of the eighth grade, at which point students must pass an examination in order to enter high school. Tieken recalled her difficulty in teaching eighth grade classes. "Over two-thirds of my kids weren't expected to pass the test to get into high school since only 32 percent of the kids can go to high school."
There are over 14,000 students in the Marshall Islands, with only two public high schools to accommodate them. Current educational spending is $9 million, which amounts to 13 percent of the total government budget. This translates to about $600 per pupil, compared with an average U.S. budget of more than $7,000 per pupil.
Dartmouth students also faced a different sort of challenge-- their own American identities. Prior to the 1986 Compact of Free Association, relations between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands bordered upon despotic. Subsequent to World War II, the U.S. used the various atolls as a nuclear testing ground. Over 67 nuclear tests destroyed much of the land, forced massive evacuations, and left an indelible impression upon Marshallese attitudes toward Americans.
"The effects of the U.S. influence in the Marshalls are so evident," Kessler said. "Being an American in [the Marshall Islands] was very difficult for me personally."
Panel members also discussed the question of whether these kinds of 12 week trips are more beneficial to the Marshallese kids or to the Dartmouth students trying to realize their own identities. Kessler noted that much of the impact of the Dartmouth group dissolved after the group flew back to the States. "When we left, we left kids without teachers. A lot of the things we worked for 10 to 12 weeks to change went back to the way they were before we got there," she said.
"Kids have ten years of poor education mixed with twelve weeks of good education," Stege said. She suggested that a two-year program would have greater impact upon the children. Although she added, "I think that the program that Dartmouth initiated is an amazing beginning and it has a great future ahead of it."
