Field Notes from Central Asia

Abstract

The fall of the USSR has left the Central Asian republics like ships without rudders as far as their formal education is concerned. Various financial and ideological arrangements concerning curricula and other variables associated with the internal efficiency of schooling between Moscow and the republics came to an abrupt end. With "independence" also came problems of rebuilding the country through training of the young and the retraining of the work force. The new technology and the sciences have made the skills of many in the former USSR citizens inappropriate for utilization for economic development.