Washington Report, September 9, 1985, Page 8

Education

Among Middle East Outreach programs operating in the US today, 12 are affiliated with federally-funded National Resource Centers for Middle East Studies (see Directory on p. 1). The Washington Report asked the coordinator of one of these centers for a status report on how Outreach programs were faring nationwide. Future issues will feature articles on some other academic programs on the Middle East available to the public.

The University Without Walls

By Charlotte Albright

In 1958, Congress enacted the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). Under Title VI, NDEA provided for the establishment of centers at institutions of higher education to provide language training and area expertise for those geographical regions considered critical to national defense and foreign policy. Needless to say, one region whose stability was deemed essential to national security was the Middle East. Thus, right from the beginning, the study of Middle Eastern languages, particularly Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, was given high priority and Middle East Centers were established.

In 1976, new guidelines announced that NDEA Centers would be required to spend at least 15 percent of their federal funds on "outreach "—that is, they were to share their language and area expertise with the general public. Outreach, according to the Federal Regulations of August, 1976, could include such services as lectures and workshops for faculty and students at the Center institution. In the main, however, outreach was for the public at large and could include lectures, concerts and art exhibits, or take the form of curriculum development, in-service teacher training, adult education classes and workshops for the business community.

Most Middle East Center directors chose to hire an outreach coordinator. Since no qualifications for these coordinators were stipulated, each Center made up its own job description. Today, some coordinators have a graduate degree and have lived in the Middle East. Many have also been Peace Corps volunteers. Others have extensive experience as teachers or librarians. Some Center directors preferred to give the outreach coordinator's job to a graduate student, often on a part-time basis.

In 1980, new federal guidelines for NDEA Centers dropped the requirement to spend 15 percent of Center funds on outreach, although Centers were still expected to operate outreach programs. In theory, Center directors could have opted then to dispense with the services of the coordinator and provide only minimal services. At the time, none did—though cutbacks did follow later.

A Plethora of Activities

Middle East outreach coordinators are emotionally and intellectually committed to their work. Since the Middle East is complex—often convulsed with violent military struggles, but of great economic and strategic importance to the United States—Americans interested in the region find it difficult to understand the issues and keep the various ethnic and religious groups, languages and countries straight in their minds. As a result, Americans tend to generalize and stereotype the Middle East and its peoples, a tendency reinforced by news stories—and even some educational materials—containing distortions and contradictory images.

To help Americans make sense of the Middle East, outreach coordinators have done everything the Office of Education originally stipulated and more. High on the list of services the outreach programs provide are activities and materials designed for use at K-12 (kindergarten through twelfth grade) levels. Many Centers have designed, written, and classroom-tested materials for K-12 students; and virtually every Center has offered in-service training—ranging from day-long workshops to courses that run for several weeks—for K-12 teachers. Several programs have also worked with local school boards to encourage them to incorporate the Middle East into their social studies curricula. All these activities are based on the premise that students who become interested in the Middle East at an early age will be able to pursue their interest at the college level—if they choose—or at least read the newspapers more intelligently.

Because of the grassroots contacts the Middle East outreach programs have in their communities, many national organizations, businesses and agencies have used the Centers to channel information they have prepared about the Middle East. Nearly every Center's home institution has been endowed with a set of six films on The Traditional World of Islam by Exxon Corporation, Mobil Corporation distributed a film on Arab immigrants to the United States called Journey to the West. Recently, the American Educational Trust presented copies of its film, Oases of the Sea: The Arab States of the Gulf, to Middle East Centers. Obviously, not only the Center, but the whole university and community at large benefit from such gifts, and everyone finds out about these materials from the outreach coordinator, who usually announces their availability in the Center newsletter.

Money Problems Persist

A continual problem for most outreach programs has been funding. Most of the money comes from Department of Education grants to the Center. Unfortunately, allocations for International Education—which includes Fulbright scholarship and group projects abroad programs, and the National Resource Language Fellowship—have remained more or less stationary at close to $30 million for the last four or five years.

Center operating costs, however, have increased during this time. Center directors may be increasingly tempted to reduce the money they spend on outreach programming, even when they are fully conscious of its value. The outreach coordinators in turn may try to patch together viable programs on a shoestring budget, or they may seek to attract some funding for special programs from non-university sources. Many outreach coordinators today spend almost as much time writing grant applications for supplemental funding as they do in carrying out the projects for which they needed the funding.

On the whole, the outreach coordinators and their Center directors can take pride in the contacts their outreach programs have made with the public and the good will these contacts have engendered. It is difficult to measure the effect of these programs—the classes, seminars, lectures, concerts, art exhibits, film series, etc.—on the attitudes of the public about the Middle East. However, teachers who have taken surveys before and after they teach units on the Middle East usually find their students' attitudes more positive after the unit than before. Outreach coordinators feel confident their programs have positive, far-reaching, and long-lasting effects.

What the future holds for Middle East outreach programs is not clear. The whole network of National Resource Centers and their outreach programs could be wiped out in a desperate Congressional attempt to reduce the federal budget deficit. Barring such an unfortunate development, however, the outreach coordinators will continue to reach out.

Charlotte Albright is outreach coordinator for the Middle East Resource Center of the University of Washington.