Stones into Schools: Greg Mortenson continues to build peace one school at a time
Published: January 14, 2010
By Kristi Niemeyer
I can’t read one of Greg Mortenson’s books without tears sneaking down my cheeks. My response, I’ve decided, has to do with my hunger for hope, my despair over politics, and a sense that each of us can help build a better world.
Apparently, I’m not alone. Mortenson’s first book, Three Cup of Tea, which chronicles how the Bozeman climber failed to ascend K2, but managed to build a school for the villagers who rescued him, was a national bestseller. He describes it as “the chronicle of an ordinary man who inadvertently bumbled into an extraordinary place.”
The book’s success and Mortenson’s own unyielding efforts have helped the Bozeman-based Central Asia Institute establish 131 schools that serve more than 58,000 students, most of them girls.
His labors earned Mortenson a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 by a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives, and Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan), for promoting education and literacy in that country’s most remote areas for the past 15 years. His odyssey was also named the “Top Adventure Story of the Decade” by Outside magazine.
While the awards and statistics are impressive, as is the fact that Three Cups of Tea is now required reading for all officers enrolled in counterinsurgency courses at the Pentagon, Mortenson says it’s the triumphs of his students that keep him inspired.
“It has everything to do with the girls whose lives have been changed through education,” he writes. “In the end, the thing I care most about – the flame that burns at the center of my work, the heat around which I cup my hands – is their stories.”
Statistics show that the return on educating girls is enormous: educated women have smaller, healthier and better-educated families; they are more likely to stand up for themselves and resist violence; and they channel more of their resources into health and education than men do.
Mortenson’s new book, Stones into Schools, paves an arduous but luminous path through Pakistan and Afghanistan – the fronts of our “War on Terror” – as the author and his devoted crew of misfits patiently lay the foundation for schools in communities that often lack the most basic amenities.
The lessons that seem to resonate with military and political leaders (Mortenson’s fans include Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former President Bill Clinton) are encapsulated in the ritual of drinking tea. That simple act, which precedes all conversations, “underscores the paramount importance of taking the time to build relationships,” writes Mortenson. It also encapsulates “the basic truth that in order to get things done in this part of the world, it is essential to listen with humility to what others have to say.”
Stones into Schools is an engrossing read on many levels. First, it’s an astonishing adventure, as Mortenson and his “Dirty Dozen” eventually build a school in the most remote corner of central Asia, for the sons and daughters of the Kirghiz – the school he calls “the flower in the farthest corner of the garden.”
It also offers insight into people we too often regard as “enemy,” such as the warlord, poet and philosopher Sadhar Khan, who fought mightily against the Soviets and the Taliban, and now turns that same ferocity toward building schools in his remote, war-sundered region.
Finally, it’s a primer on how to promote peace “with books not bombs” in an area plagued by armed conflict and religious extremism.
Along the way, Mortenson turns Montana’s “Last Best Place” motto on its literary ear. The Central Asia Institute, he says, pursues the “Last Place First” philosophy of “planting a handful of schools in the hardest places of all.”
In the hinterlands where Mortenson and his crew work, $20 is enough to educate a first grader for a year; $340 can purchase a four-year high-school education; and $50,000 buys an eight-room schoolhouse and pays teachers’ salaries for five years.
I can’t help but compare those numbers to the million dollars the White House estimates that it costs to keep one U.S. soldier in Pakistan and Afghanistan for a year.
Learn more about the Central Asia Institute at www.ikat.org, and consider making your own investment in peace.
Great book review Kristi! You have reviewed more than a book, but a movement of heart to help solve a world problem. After already adding Three Cups of Tea to my educational library and sharing it with others, I am ordering Mortenson’s Stones into Schools immediately. He has become one of my modern-day heroes!
