To Fight and Learn: The PRAXIS and Promise of Literacy in Eritrea's Independence War FROM THE PUBLISHER
What was the promise of education that drew thousands of rural Eritreans to literacy classes in the midst of drought, famine, and war? This new book examines the remarkable testimony of Eritrea's fighter-teachers, the teenagers who spent years behind enemy lines teaching peasants and nomads to read and write during Eritrea's independence struggle. Using philosophical hermeneutics - the study of human understanding - as an analytical framework, Dr. Gottesman shows how the teachers became students of their students, learning the language and customs of rural people to create a "fusion of horizons." In this educational process, traditional Eritrean values and the progressive vision of the revolutionary movement found a locus for dialogue, exchange, and for change itself.
SYNOPSIS
From the Author
What I like best about my book...and what the title means
What I like best in my book are the stories the young literacy teachers tell about their experiences in Eritrea's 30-year war for independence. With a bounty on their heads, they constantly eluded (and sometimes fought) enemy soldiers in order to teach Eritrea's peasants to read and write. Many rural villages 'adopted' the young teachers, treating them as their own children. In dramatic confrontations with enemy troops, the villagers protected teachers' lives at great risk to their own. Most striking were the changes the teenage 'revolutionaries' themselves went through. Day to day, villagers shared their practical local knowledge with the young teachers. The literacy campaign became a model of collaborative learning: a 'praxis' of students and teachers working together to understand each other and find the best solutions to the communities' problems. From these experiences, the 'promise' of education was understood by people who had never had education available before. The results are seen today in the demand coming from every city, town, and village in independent Eritrea for schools and education programs.
Les Gottesman (lgottesman@ggu.edu), the author of this book, June 5, 1999
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Dedicated to the martyrs of the Eritrean National Literacy Campaign, 1983-1987, this book chronicles the mutual learning that transpired between teenage literacy teachers and their peasant students during Eritrea's independence struggle. Via retrospective teacher interviews, Gottesman (English and communications, Golden Gate U., San Francisco) views within a philosophical hermeneutics' framework how this process was formative for the new nation's education system by confronting social change issues. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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