Wednesday, November 21, 2001

Colleges Struggle to Offer Courses in Pashto, Language of Afghans and Others By MICHAEL ARNONE Driven by the war in Afghanistan, instructors at four colleges are scrambling to offer traditional and distance-education courses in Pashto, a language virtually untaught in America but spoken by more than 20 million people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pashto is also the primary language of the Taliban. Nova Southeastern University is developing its own distance-education course in Pashto, the University of Pennsylvania has added a classroom course to its schedule, and Florida International University is also considering adding a course. In addition, Steven Donahue, an adjunct professor of English as a second language at Miami-Dade Community College, assisted by Habib Tegey, who is the senior editor for the Pashto service at the Voice of America and the author of several textbooks on Pashto, has created a distance-learning dictionary of Pashto vocabulary. Florida International and Nova Southeastern are both considering using Mr. Donahue's program. Hoping to meet the new need for Pashto speakers, Mr. Donahue says his "dictionary on steroids" is a "quick and dirty" field manual that students can use to learn 1,000 words of core vocabulary. It can stand on its own or serve as a language laboratory for traditional classroom courses, he says. Mr. Donahue offers students a smorgasbord of options for receiving their vocabulary lessons: on CD's, on Web pages, through personal data assistants like Palm Pilots, and even over the phone, using voice-recognition software.Foreseeing a huge demand from the armed forces for the course, Mr. Donahue designed it to meet the Shared Content Object Reference Model -- or SCORM -- standards that the United States military is developing to foster interoperability among different military applications. Mr. Donahue says he met this month with representatives from the Department of Defense, who expressed interest in the program. The State Department and several nongovernmental organizations -- including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders -- have also contacted him. Nova Southeastern University is creating its own distance-learning course in Pashto, says Martha Smith-Singleton, executive director for the university's NSUCommuniversity. The course, which mixes traditional teaching in the classroom with online options, should be ready by January, she says. Nova also provides courses to eArmyU, the Army's distance-education program, says Ms. Smith-Singleton. Nova could provide its own courses or Mr. Donahue's program to eArmyU, which the Army expects will eventually serve up to 100,000 soldiers. The University of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has scheduled an intensive, traditional-format course in Pashto for the spring of 2002 -- so far the only one in the country, says Harold F. Schiffman, who is a professor of Dravidian linguistics and culture and language coordinator for South Asian languages at the university. Similarly, Florida International is searching for an instructor to teach a classroom course in Pashto, says Tallulah W. Brown, program director for university outreach and continuous learning. The university is considering using Mr. Donahue's program as part of the course. Students have yet to mirror the intense interest that institutions, the government, and the military have shown in Pashto, instructors say. Mr. Donahue, Ms. Brown, and Ms. Smith-Singleton say no one has signed up for Pashto programs or courses yet. Mr. Schiffman says he has two students for his spring course at Penn. But they all expect increased interest once the courses are in place and marketing increases public awareness of them. Getting enough students will be important to the success of Pashto programs, Mr. Tegey says. "Unless institutions of higher education have enough students, it won't be reasonable to teach them," he says. Outside financing, especially by the government, is important, he says. "If the budget comes from the outside, they can do it," he says. "Right now the political motivation is terribly high." Colleges -- including even the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, a language academy in Monterey, Calif., run by the Department of Defense -- have been cutting back on teaching Pashto and other central Asian languages for years, says Alejandra Parra, academic director of the Language Institute at Nova Southeastern. The lack of sustained interest in teaching these languages is having a profound effect on the war in Afghanistan, says Mr. Schiffman. The United States military forces, he says, are "relying entirely on Pakistani intelligence because we don't have anyone who speaks [Pashto]. Not one." Mr. Donahue, Ms. Smith-Singleton, and the others think that interest in Pashto will only grow in the near future, even though the American campaign in Afghanistan has made unexpectedly fast progress in the past two weeks. Rebuilding Afghanistan's government and infrastructure will take years, and knowledge of Pashto will remain vital. "Even if the military campaign is over, we will still need to know what's going on over there," says Mr. Schiffman. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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