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Published: August 15th 2005
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A friend and I in Canada were bantering back and fourth about the conditions for teachers these days versus the hours they work and the time they get off. He asserted that teachers receive no more vacation days than anyone else. I quickly reminded him of the whole summer with July and August. He sat there bewildered for a second and then replied with a smirk, “Oh yeah, I guess we count those in months.”
While I’ve always been a proponent of teachers and education in general, it was always something that was more of an automatic response: is education good? Yes, of course. However, I don’t think I ever really appreciated the value of system for education with all its direct and indirect manifestations. I’ve had an opportunity to visit schools and orphanages while talking to students at every level here and while there are essentially no root causes in poverty and problems associated with development, education is as close as you’re going to get.
Knowledge is power and in a society where there are so many who are helpless and powerless, this alone speaks volumes about why education is so important. But as with my creed about education before, these are just words and it’s something completely different to see things in “real-life”. One thing that might be less apparent is the indirect effects of education, which seem to me to be where the real-life, most important, and most practical learning occur.
The ABC’s and 123’s are the direct building blocks for English to math and essentially from grade 1 and on. Staying in the lines in colouring to learning the proper form of an essay are examples of direct learning. Yielding, adhering, and demonstrating understanding of this knowledge is what you are evaluated on and is the indicator of how “smart” or educated you are in school. But outside of school, how often are the problems encountered solved by, “Man, if I could only find the slope to this damn line!” or “Cripes, where the hell did General Montcalme go wrong with Upper Canada again?”, or any other direct applications of lesson plans. In fact, we arrived in the 19th century with architecture, priceless art, and steam power, electricity all without university or college institutions. Combine this with post-secondary schoolings objective, university more so than college, of “learning how to learn” and you get a sense that it’s not all about the direct knowledge imparted on students. So what is it outside of the explicit curriculum that makes education vital in any society’s development?
How many of us can look back at any level of school and remember a teacher or a coach who have played a profound role in where we are now and how we perceive things? Whether in elementary school or university, within the classroom or extracurricular, most of us can fondly remember a certain individual who helped guide and cultivate our growth. But do we really assimilate the impact they had in our lives? I know I didn’t appreciate how much of my progress was dependent on these figures and like a famous Canadian concluded, “the medium IS the message”. Perhaps my failure to recognize this was partly due to the fact that we have a supply of mentors, leaders. Furthermore “mentoring” is not listed in the curriculum or in a teachers’ job description. Unfortunately, this is a scarce resource here in Zambia and as another EWB volunteer put it, there is no Boy Scouts in Zambia.
First off, many of the teachers here in Zambia are the “leftovers” in a sense. A teacher at a typical boarding school earns between $150-200 per month, public school around $100-150, and at orphanages a whopping $35. These figures vary somewhat depending on the institution but are fairly standard in what I’ve encountered. Market forces ensure these paltry incentives don’t attract “la crème de la crop”. The standards for admittance to post-secondary programs are also the lowest for education in comparison to agriculture, humanities, natural resources, business/accounts, or any other faculty you think of in Canada. The phrase “extra-curricular” is alien in many of the schools, which precludes an entire alternative source of leaders in Canada. Needless to say, the teacher or coach you were introduced to on the first day of school or practice may differ from the caliber of the one here or not even exist at all.
I’m not even going to touch the nature vs. nurture debate except for the fact that your environment has a very probable potential to affect you in many ways. A large amount of time is spent in the classroom and in a school environment. Here you are subjected to a number of different influences from friends to teachers to problem solving situations that help cast who you are from a very young age. On the whole it is a very positive environment since it encourages and promotes the acquisition of knowledge, freedom of thought and expression, as well as incentive for development and growth. The above is especially true for a country like Zambia, which has 750 000 orphans in a population of 12 million seeking security and guidance in places other than home. The seeds of the future are sewn and cultivated here in children at a very impressionable age and in even looking at history, from Civil Rights movements to opposition for U.S. intervention in Iraq, educational institutions have provided a fertile environment for social movements to thrive against the forces of inertia and policy.
As it stands now, many children do not have the opportunity to benefit as a byproduct of this positive environment. One class we visited had a class list of 39 with an attendance on that day of 22. When I asked how many kids were absent that day, the teacher said 10. That is almost half the class absent on a normal day with seven apparently not expected to return. AIDS and sickness in general are largely culpable for absenteeism. The pandemic plays an even larger role in orphanages since parents may have transmitted the virus to their offspring before dying. In the rural population, many are subsistence farmers and when the rainy season comes children may be forced out of school to compensate for the shortage of household labour. Although school up to grade 7 is free, the cost of uniforms for all the children in a family is sometimes prohibitive. What many Zambian’s are unaware of is that school uniforms are now not mandatory. There are a multitude of other challenges presented to the typical aspiring student to graduate grade 12 as personified by Lackson and sometimes it seems the least of which is obtaining the required test scores.
Although the situation appears grim, there are a few rays penetrating dark and intimidating skies. I have met a number of teachers here who are working hard despite “adverse” conditions. Additionally, many of the other volunteers I have met are working in education at some level. I have so say that most are sporting a thick European accent of some sort and we could use a little more “eh”’s in this school system but they are definitely here for the right reasons. Students at the University of Zambia were rioting against the administration for disruption of classes and the residence accommodations. I don’t normally endorse the use of violence or force but sometimes it is the only thing that will speak to deaf ears. And finally, I have met a number of bright and enthusiastic students who are optimistic about the future: despite what their educational experience has entailed thus far.
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