To fight and learn

What was the promise of education that drew thousands of rural Eritreans to literacy classes in the midst of drought, famine, and war? This new book examines the remarkable testimony of Eritrea's fighter-teachers, the teenagers who spent years behind enemy lines teaching peasants and nomads to read and write during Eritrea's independence struggle. Using philosophical hermeneutics - the study of human understanding - as an analytical framework, Dr.

Gottesman shows how the teachers became students of their students, learning the language and customs of rural people to create a "fusion of horizons." In this educational process, traditional Eritrean values and the progressive vision of the revolutionary movement found a locus for dialogue, exchange, and for change itself.