Article January 6, 2003 Issue

THE Brick Project

Text by Marilyn Jones Senior writer

In the mid -'80s, Karim Ajania left a career as an investment banker on Wall Street to become a high-school teacher in Harlem and in the South Bronx. Having grown up in Kenya, it seemed only natural that he would tell stories of his boyhood to his students—who couldn't seem to get enough of hearing about Africa.

A few years later, as a graduate of MIT's Media Lab, and as a doctoral student at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, Ajania drew on his experience with those high-school kids to conceive of a "living dissertation," which has since become known as the Brick Project.

Essentially, the Brick Project will link middle and high schools on four continents through the Internet and through digital technology. Each school will comprise one "corner" of an individual brick. Consequently, each school will learn about the three other schools' countries, their beliefs, interests, and, most importantly, the crucial issues that each country is struggling to overcome (hunger, violence, child labor, environmental damage).

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