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Adult Education. "Our aim," says Lee, "is an education system that will allow a Samoan student to compete on equal terms in mainland colleges." As a dividend, the new schools, designed in Samoa's traditional open-sided fale style, are becoming nighttime community centers with television programs to combat adult illiteracy and improve public health, farming and self-government. And with 275 million children in the world getting no formal instruction, the ETV project in American Samoa has drawn the attention of education officials from half a dozen nations in Asia and Africa.
Just as on the mainland, TV makes celebrities. The elastic, expressive face of English Teacher David Lommen, who comes from Minot, N. Dak.., made him famous within a week. Lommen had been told that Polynesian children could not learn to distinguish the th and z sounds of English. He accepted the challenge. Now when he takes a walk, he is sometimes followed by kids dancing after him and hissing, "Th . . . zzz . th . . zzz!"