More new school buildings have been built in the Ramallah area since the Six-Day War than during the whole period between 1948 and 1967, Dr. Abbas Elkurd reported. Dr. Elkurd is the Ramallah District Superintendent of Education. Sine 1967, Dr. Elkurd said there have been 21 new schools in Ramallah, 193 new classes and 164 new teachers who have teacher’s certificates. In 1967 only 31 teachers in the Ramallah district had academic degrees whereas today there are 80. Altogether 70 percent of West Bank teachers have at least teacher’s certificates.
Dr. Elkurd said that “Education should aim at mutual understanding between nations and not hatred.” He noted that one of the main educational problems in the West Bank was a lack of vocational school facilities. There were far too many humanities graduates, he said and not enough jobs for them. The annual education budget for Judea/Samaria is about $24 million of which some $1 million is spent on new buildings. Since 1967 there has been an annual growth rate of 250 classrooms a year.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
