Liz,
I enjoyed your random thoughts! As a teacher you have probably observed
more than the rest of us, one thing I do know is that the kids in
Africa long to be educated and their families see Africa`s future in
their children, so want them to achieve.
Two things: Don`t be surprised that there isn`t a word in Swahili for
Scotland, if there isn`t a word for certain things, it`s usually said
in English. Also, strange that children in Kenya and probably other
African countries, used to have to learn Shakespeare, it somehow didn`t
seem applicable!
We could say so much more on this subject. I have a good friend who is
also a teacher, she once taught in a village school in Nigeria, she
said all the kids had so little but were eager to learn, it was so hot
that Sue said she found it hard to keep awake after midday!
Pat.




In message , Liz Leyden
writes
[Post-script ante-script warning: Long! and most of it I've said here
before at different times. It's also very disjointed as random
thoughts came into my head.]

This thread is surprising me on several levels.
Firstly, I never cease to be amazed at how well-educated the Africans
I meet are, although these to tend to be those working in the tourist
sector. Expcially when I've seen some upcountry schools with one room,
surrounded by a brick wall, a corrugated metal roof and nothing else:
not one other thing inside, not even a floor, and well over a hundred
pupils. I went to a bird guide's home, what we'd call a small garden
shed, shared with his to-me large family and some hens. Pride of place
went to a letter torn from the newspaper: he'd written it, eloquently
in his third language (English), about the environmental problems to
Kakamega Forest caused by people taking wood from the forest to use
for firewood. This was a man, who had only attended primary school,
and he structured his arguments better than most/all of my pupils,
with all the money that is poured into our education system.
Also in the forest, we met a group of secondary pupils, all keen to
practice their English and discuss environmental issues.
I've had interesting discussions with waiters in several lodges about
the connection/disconnection between Scotland/England and the UK
(still can't get over Swahili not having a word for Scotland :-( !)
and asking about the distinction between our Parliament and the UK
government. Try having a conversation here about the Kenya government
with a waiter, in a language other than English. Unless you hit on a
student studying languages with International Politics, you're on
plums. In Europe, I've met lots of people who think Scotland is part
of England. Never once in Kenya.

I have to admit that one Kenyan waiter was surprised to hear that you
could go on 'game drives' in India to see tigers. He said it made
sense, he'd just never thought of it.

When I went to Namibia, no-one of my acquaintance, apart from birders
and one or two people who had heard of their football team, had ever
heard of Namibia, although some older people knew about South-West
Africa.

I'd hardly think it was a bad education system whereby people who had
left school at a fairly early stage didn't know about stars and
planets - I mean, it's hardly the first thing I'd put on the
curriculum of any school, far less one in the developing world - I
mean, it hardly matters to most of us. As far as I see, they put it
into our system to try to interest boys in something. (In the UK, boys
(in general) are rapidly falling behind girls (in general) in
virtually all subjects at all levels, with, by and large, no great
interest in anything.)

Also, with geography, in our system anyway, we don't teach every
country, we teach 'systems' whereby pupils can interpret the geography
of any country they need to study at a later date. Even when I was at
school, when learning 'facts' had much more emphasis than it did now,
I studied for Higher Geography such random topics as tundra and taiga,
glaciation, fjords and rias, cattle farming in Denmark, interpreting
aerial photographs, ordinance survey maps, and of course Scotland -
ship-building and steel works, both since consigned to history!
Anything else I know, I've picked up mostly from television. So
there's a rub - not many poor, upcountry Africans have access to
televisions, unless (you know which country I mean) has cynically
placed some in villages, as they have in India, to try to push their
way of life, and more importantly, the products they wish to sell
there.

I'm actually shocked at the lack of General Knowledge of our pupils,
and how often even 'top section' pupils don't know something really
basic. But facts for the sake of facts aren't taught here any more,
and they won't learn from TV as I and most of my generation did,
because they have much more choice of programmes than we did, and they
'all' seem to watch MTV most of the time.

Another thing which has struck me again and again, and never more than
this year in Uganda, is the number of people who having asked and
heard that I'm a teacher say, "That is good." You don't get that here!

One time in Kenya, can't remember what year in the '90s, many people
said, "Oh,you're a teacher, why don't you come and teach in Kenya"
(Actually, my game plan was always to teach in Africa, but that's
another story). I said, "Oh, it's far better for Kenyan teachers to
get jobs teaching in your schools." So many people said the same thing
that I made enquiries and discovered that the teachers in the public
schools hadn't been paid for three months, and were returning to their
shambas. I don't imagine many teachers here would work for more than
about a week past pay day.

I understand, however, that teachers aren't held in high regard in
Malawi, though I don't yet know the reason. The school I teach in - in
an 'area of multiple deprivation' (by UK standards, of course, it's
all relative) - has, together with its feeder primary schools, raised
over £30,000/US$60,000 in two years to build a 'school for Africa'.
I'd hoped for a while that it would be in Kenya, but for various
reasons it will be in Malawi. We're actually totally rebuilding an
existing school, which is in serious disrepair - one of our Primary
head-teachers went out in July to see it, and did presentations at
assembly this week. We don't know we're born.

To be fair, once I was at the Mara River and along came some very
well-dressed Africans - I'd imagined it must be a wedding party, but
in fact it wasa group of teacher-trainees doing some field training. I
was astonished that some of them didn't know they had to go to the
river to see the hippos, but of course, most of them would be
'townies'.

I went to a very moving afternoon in Budongo this July at a
singing/dancing performance by local orphans (mostly AIDS orphans,
some AIDS victims) aimed at raising money for an orphanage. Again, the
children and teens were very happy to come and practice their English
with visitors. Some of them had jotters and drawings for sale: I
bought one with lots of drawings of African animals in it. They are so
proud of their forest, and especially the gorillas.

Another point is that whereas of course people need to be educated so
that their country can develop, that can lead to other problems. I've
read of kids at Lake Turkana whose parents were 'strongly encouraged'
to send them to school, where they had a largely-irrelevant European
education but very little chance of getting a job in the towns,
because there were already too many people with qualifications but no
jobs in the towns, who would have first pick of any jobs which came
up. These young people went back to their tribes, but were no use
there either, because they didn't know how to look after cattle and
all the other traditional tribal skills. In many cases (though not
that one, where the education/books/uniforms/etc. had been provided)
it costs a family a lot to send a child to secondary school, much more
to college/university - often distant relatives have to chip in, which
means the person so supported has financial duties to the offspring of
these relatives for the rest of their lives. The family has invested
in them. I remember our driver/guide telling is about a nephew he had
who had gone to India to do post-graduate study and had died there. I
knew that as well as sorrow for the young man (he had told me proudly
of his nephew on a previous trip) that this was a financial blow for
himself and for his extended family.

I also remember reading a while back (8-10 years or so) that the
biggest problem in Kampala was gangs of disaffected young men who had
been educated - right through high school or even college and then had
no jobs - there just weren't any. It's all very well being an
entrepreneur - but if no one can afford your goods or services, you
can't function. A vicious circle.

Anyway, to stop me going on all night in a similarly disjointed vein,
I'll stop now.

Slainte

Liz



--
Pat Anderson