Cultural diplomacy pays off, envoys say

America’s other Army: Inside the Foreign Service

Fourth in a series

In September, five Americans took up assignments as English teachers thousands of miles from home, determined that, by the end of the school year, their students would not only speak some English, but know much more about the United States.

“They welcomed us with open arms,” Craig Dicker, a Foreign Service officer who helped to place the newcomers said of the schools that hired the teachers. “They were thrilled to have Americans teach there.”

There would have been nothing exceptional about the teaching assignments had it not been for the particular schools: Islamic institutes in Indonesia that prepare teachers for the country’s large network of religious high schools, known as madrassas.

Mr. Dicker said the idea came from Nur Fadil Lubis, vice rector of an institute in Indonesia’s third-largest city, Medan. He had hosted a Fulbright scholar before and thought that his students would benefit from having an American in the classroom.

The first group of American teachers organized by Mr. Dicker, at the time an English-language officer at the embassy in Jakarta, arrived in the fall of 2002 but had to leave almost immediately because of the terrorist bombing in the resort of Bali that October.

The current group ranges in age from 25 to 55 and all have master’s degrees. Their annual salaries, averaging $34,000, are paid by the State Department.

“It’s an opportunity for us to share more of our culture with this very important constituency,” Mr. Dicker said recently in Budapest, where he moved last summer.

“Is that a wise expenditure of money? I believe so. After working with an American for two or three years, those future teachers will have notions and ideas about America they would not have had if that person hadn’t been there,” he said.

“We are dealing with people who will have an impact on an audience that we keep on hearing is so important to us.”

Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslims population, is a major concern for the United States, with rising anti-Americanism making it a potential breeding ground for terrorists.

Since the September 11 attacks, Washington has been pondering a strategy to counter anti-U.S. sentiment around the world, especially in Muslim nations in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Story Continues →