King Asks More Aid from Faculty For Nigerian High-School Program

The coordinator of Harvard's Nigerian high-school project has issued "an open invitation" to Faculty members, asking them to participate in the project and to nominate candidates for overseas assignment.

Progresr in building and equipping the school has been "nothing short of astounding" in light of "the extraordinary physical handicaps" that beset its first year, according to a report prepared by Richard G. King. But "if our school is now literally out of the woods, it is not so figuratively," King said.

The school, which the University is operating under a million-dollar contract with the Agency for International Development, opened in March, 1963. It has 11 Harvard and 12 Nigerian staff members and an enrollment of over 400.

The school "demands the services of experienced secondary school teachers, but it also demands a closer working relationship with the parent university," King raid. "With one or two notable exceptions, this close relationship between teaching members of the staff in the field and in Cambridge has not yet been well established," he claimed.

Intellectual Contacts Essential

"Our school is in a somewhat remote rural location. The physical location, however is much less of a handicap to our joint venture than the psyhological isolation which silence from Cambridge can impose," he said.

Although King did not attempt to evaluate the project's effect so far, he observed that a comprehensive high school "represents an enormous step in the direction of democratization of secondary education" in Nigeria.

"We are told that our school may become a model not only for secondary schools in the Western region of Nigeria, but for other African countries as well," he said.