Schools Abroad: Teaching Amid Terror

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Toward a Better Life. The Hamlet Project is also trying to cope with Viet Nam's tremendous teacher shortage. Of the 31,286 primary grade teachers in the country, only 10,500 have had any training at all. Nearly 9,000 of these were pushed through a crash three month training program under the Hamlet Project at centers in each province. These "90day wonders" are assigned to hamlets as soon as an area is considered secure.

A massive textbook program financed mainly by the U.S., Taiwan and Australia has supplied more than 10 million books to Vietnamese schools—to the considerable irritation of the V.C. One Communist woman in black pajamas appeared at a school in the hamlet of Thoi Binh, looked at the books and warned Teacher Tran Thi Tarn: "You must not teach these things." Despite the warning, Mme. Tam, a mother of eight, goes on with her work. Says she: "It is important that our children have knowledge—then perhaps they will have a better life than we."