It’s August already, and any day I expect the arrival of “The Letter”.  That’s the one with the school district return address and the schedule for the first days back at work.  But summer vacation isn’t quite over, and I have a last minute recommendation for your reading list:  Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson.  I received it as a gift from the National Education Association Foundation in July and just finished it.  I have been telling everyone about it, expecting them to recognize Mortenson as the author of the wonderful bestseller Three Cups of Tea, but I have been surprised at how many people have not heard of him yet.  So here’s my book report.

Greg Mortenson was a mountain climber in 1993 when he got lost on the descent from K2, and ended up in the village of Korphe, in Pakistan.  The people of the village helped him recover his strength, and a young girl named Chocho got him to promise to come back and build a school for the village.  Three Cups of Tea is the story of how Mortenson fulfilled that promise, and embarked on a mission to continue to build schools, mainly for girls, in the most remote regions of Pakistan.  Then in 1999 emissaries of the Kirghiz people from the Wakhan region of Afghanistan asked him to build a school for them.  Stones into Schools continues the story started in Three Cups of Tea and tells how Moretenson and his Central Asia Institute fulfilled their promise to the Kirghiz as well.  As of 2009, the CAI had successfully established 130 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide (or have provided) education to over 51,000 students, with an emphasis on girls’ education.

Mortenson splits his time between fund raising for the CAI and working in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Back in 1994 the Pennies for Peace service-learning program began at Westside Elementary School in River Fall, Wisconsin, when students through their own initiative, raised 62,340 pennies to help Greg build his first school in Pakistan.  

Finally, in news particularly hopeful for me (my son is a Corporal in the Marines, and will be deployed to Afghanistan in September) the U.S. military is increasingly paying heed to Mortenson’s methods of building relationships with the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Admiral Mike Mullen said: “What Greg understands better than most–and what he practices more than anyone else I know– is the simple truth that all of us are better off when all of us have the opportunity to learn, especially our children.  By helping them learn and grow, he’s shaping the very future of a region and giving hope to an entire generation.”

These are important, inspiring books; books that highlight the importance of education and the work we all do.  Give them a read!