Education in the United States is taken for granted. So much so that apathy plagues American high schools. But imagine a place where education is the most important thing in students' lives, where it is their only key to unlock the door holding them in a squalid, boring life. What would this place look like?

With fellow students from Stanford University, I spent a month this summer working at the high school at the Dukwi Refugee Camp in Botswana. What struck me first was the dedication of the students at the camp.

They arrive at school at 7:40 a.m., and aren't done for the day until 8:30 p.m. Classes let out at 4:20, but since there is no electricity in the tents where the students live, they are required to return to school from 6:30 to 8:30 every night to study. During dinnertime, many students stay around school to practice sports on dirt fields.

No one complains about these 13-hour days. In fact, it was because of pressure from the students that the school is open for the evening hours. Why do these students care so much -- not just the few, top students in the school, but each and every one?

Many are in their late 20s and have led difficult lives that include persecution and deaths of many family members. With such histories, many people would be disillusioned with life, or at best, looking at small ways to make money. Many of their peers in the camp have chosen this route. Not these students, though.

Education is their life, their one hope of leaving the camp and escaping their past. They are the most dedicated group of people I have ever met. To get into university is their single goal in life, for they know if they don't their chances of leaving the camp, barring a political change in their homeland, are nearly zero.

Because so many refugees flock to its borders, Botswana has one of the slowest processes for determining the status of a person seeking refuge in all of Africa. Upon entering Botswana, such a person is classified as an asylum-seeker, not an official refugee.

Asylum-seekers have few rights. They can't get a job and may leave the refugee camp only with special permission. The process of obtaining official refugee status should take from three to six months, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In Botswana it can take five years or longer.

Many students I met were asylum-seekers, and therefore if they do get admitted to the University of Botswana, must obtain special residency permits before they can attend the school 350 miles away.

With all of these obstacles, why do these students pursue higher education? In the refugee camp they are given food and shelter by the United Nations. Some of the refugees have been living under these conditions in the camp for 20 years. Why do they not just apathetically accept their situations and live with it?

It's because these students are not apathetic about their lives. They are determined, confident and filled with the hope and faith that education will be their salvation from this life. And they will let nothing -- age, hardship or persecution -- stand in their way.

Theirs is a story we in America can learn from. In our own schools, we see students take their education and our prosperity for granted. We simply need to look at other people in the world to put our own fortunes into perspective.

Richard Vaughn of Menifee is a 2002 graduate of Paloma Valley High School and a student at Stanford University.

8/12/03