How, he wanted to know, do educators in Afghanistan use technology in the classroom?

First, explained Zabuillah Asmatey, it'd be nice to have a classroom.

"First, we need a roof to put over a computer," said Asmatey, deputy minister of education in Afghanistan. "Many of our children are learning while sitting on the ground, so the question of educational technology is a bit far away."

With that and other descriptions of the academic lives of their counterparts in the war-torn country, students at Craigmont High School shook their heads Thursday and covered their mouths as they got a lesson that even a school specializing in international studies couldn't match.

Asmatey and other Afghan leaders are in Memphis this week participating in the Memphis-Afghan Friendship Summit, a program initiated to increase understanding between the two cultures and to help Afghanistan rebuild after 20 years of war.

On Thursday, some members of the group, accompanied by city schools Supt. Johnnie Watson and school board member Lora Jobe, ate a lunch of shish kebabs prepared by Craigmont's culinary students, then entered the school's gymnasium to a thundering ovation from the student body.

Members of the school's Ambassador Corps asked Asmatey questions about what life is like for Afghanistan's high school students. His answers stunned them.

"I was really upset when I heard they don't even have roofs over the heads of the children," said Amanda Campbell, 17, president of the Ambassadors. Asmatey said that many Afghan school children sit outside in the dirt to hear their lessons.

Also, Asmatey said, some 80 percent of the country's school buildings have been destroyed by wars.

"It devastated me to hear that they're that poor," said Mary Wu, 15.

Craigmont was selected for the visit partly because its focus is international studies, said Mark Morris, Chairman of the summit.

The group also visited the Shrine School on Thursday so officials could learn about teaching Afghan students disabled by war injuries.

The only public event of the visit, Morris said, will be an informal get-together of the visitors and Memphis Afghans, and anyone else who'd like to come, at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Muslim Society, 1065 Stratford Road.

"Just as you live in a great country, the children of Afghanistan wish to live like you and to have an education like you have," Asmatey told the students.

Thousands of new schools are needed, he said, to accommodate 4.5 million children. And, because the education system has been in disarray for so long, the government needs the expertise of Americans and others in shaping a curriculum.

To teach them more about that, some members of the delegation met with the city school system's curriculum staff Thursday.

Asmatey spent an hour answering the students' questions, then had one of his own for his audience as he described a girls' school in Kabul called Mariam High School, where 9,000 students attend classes in three shifts. He asked them if they would form a sister-school relationship with the students in Kabul.

After the program, students wondered how they could help.

"What can I do?" asked Reggie Nichols, 16. "Money's good, I guess."

"Not just money, though," replied Patrina Craine, 15. "We can try to help in any way we can, like donating old books and computers."

Then the students returned to their gleaming classrooms, their new books and their modern computers.

For more information about the Memphis-Afghan Summit see www.mafsummit.org or call 260-5764.

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