Earlier this week, at the Kandahar education office, more than a hundred overjoyed, almost disbelieving teachers crammed into a room, men and women together for a change, planning how to rebuild the school system.
And between lectures on child development and learning styles, the soon-to-be-teachers crammed their notebooks with handy tips: Play relaxing music after lunch, when the students are usually wound up.
He describes the teaching there as "excellent in that old-fashioned grammar school way" but remembers one teacher cramming the whole of English literature, including Shakespeare, into a single term so as to leave two terms free for Yeats: "Or at least it seemed like that at the time".
The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is an imaginatively conceived parallel universe -- with sadistic teachers, bullies, cramming for exams and acne that resists being removed by curse -- with which any schoolchild can identify.
"I don't think people understand the rigors of what the state is trying to put forth," said Mrs. Harris, who said kindergarten teachers are forced to cram a full-day curriculum into 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Students, teachers and visitors are cramming for exams, flirting, napping, instant-messaging, researching, reading and discussing.
As the clock ticked past 7 p.m., an overflow audience of teachers, parents and students crammed the boardroom and spilled out into the adjoining rooms of the district headquarters.
In this deeply sentimental inspirational-teacher story, Mr. Moore crams his experiences into the familiar formula of an exuberant outsider inspiring his difficult charges.
But a new study suggests that the tablet was probably a teacher's guide, crammed with answers to classroom problems.
Relief, indifference, opposition?" He suggests there would be outrage both from mothers as well as from teachers who would have to cram a whole year into shortened terms.
