In Kibombomene, there is a Basic School, which is a government-run elementary school that goes up to Grade 9 (the extent of elementary education here). Grades 10, 11 and 12 are usually user-pay in Zambia, and one must pass the Grade 9 government board exams to qualify for entrance to them. The Same World Same Chance school exists in part to provide that secondary school program that would otherwise be completely unavailable to the sustenance agriculturalists living in this village, and in part to ensure that students are able to pass the exams to begin with. As such, we have a strong relationship and partnership with the state-run counterpart. So after more than two weeks here, learning the rhythm, making plans for the ways in which I can best help, I decided it was time to meet the Headmaster of the Kibombomene Basic School.
I walked through dense grasses and trees, past thrity foot ant hills and sprawling cassava plantations, along the too-narrow baking highway until after four kilometres I reached the Headmaster's house. From the highway, there is a red mud structure with an unglassed window, like an abandoned shop, and a fence made of reeds with a splendid grass archway leading to the yard.
"Welcome! Welcome, my friend," came the jovial voice and smile before I was blinded by the yellow corporate T-shirt for MTN, a local cell phone company. I barely noticed half a dozen or so dusty clothed men camouflaged against the russet dried mud, sitting in the shade. The man in yellow practically ran to shake my hand in the complex way that is done here, "I am Wilson. I am happy to have you here. Please, sit."
I sat on a wooden bench with some of the other men who may have been in audience with him. In front of us was a table-top nailed onto a stump, and upon it, three or four plastic glasses with a milky-looking brown liquid that was poured from a red plastic facsimile of a tea pot. Wilson wasted no time in explaining, "Here we sell this Zambian Brew," I could hear the capitalization, "It is a fundraiser for the school. My family and I, even we brew this ourselves from corn and sorghum. We sell it for a thousand kwatcha," about twenty cents.
"If I purchased one, would you have one with me?"
"Mm.mmm," a tonal Zambian response that translates roughly into "Uh-huh".
The brew is very difficult to describe, but I will try. Suppose that someone poured a pitcher of stale beer and left it in the sun all day until it was flat and warmer than the air. Then someone threw in a little corn meal and let it soak; and perhaps stirred in a little bit of wood glue. "It's excellent," I said, "I love it". When men talk business together for the first time, it is always best for the initiate to match the patron drink-for-drink.
It took no time for the conversation to switch to education. We laughed at the similarities of the public school systems in Zambia and Ontario — new initiatives like new socks, changed well before the effectiveness of the older systems can be demonstrated; difficulties in implementing truly good new ideas (or truly good old ideas that were never popular with the faculty); perennial lack of funding for programs, but seemingly infinite funding for non-classroom infrastructure. And, of course, the stinging sense that while the public can agree in principle that education is a good thing, no one seems able to come to consensus about its ultimate aims. Parents who like the idea of their kids being educated but have no ambition to be a part of that process.
So the chief challenge in Zambia, if what emerged from the conversation between Wilson and me is any indication, can be reduced to the fact that students need to write these board exams. I've seen them. In the first place, they're only in English, and the English level of children at Kibombomene is very low. Secondly, the tests themselves are not constructed well; one must understand English at a very nuanced level to have a hope of knowing what some of the questions are asking. I doubt many Ontario students could pass them.
The result of the conversation was a very cordial mutual invitation to work together to develop and coordinate our programs so that they were complementing each other.
What is the ultimate goal of education? Capital worth? Understanding of the world? Striving for peace?
All true, but none true enough. The goal is, or ought to be, emancipation. Providing a choice. Allow people to name their worlds and move within them freely, and let them make up their own minds.
Call me an optimist, but five Zambian Brews later and I think we're closer to that ideal for the people of Kibombomene.
I walked through dense grasses and trees, past thrity foot ant hills and sprawling cassava plantations, along the too-narrow baking highway until after four kilometres I reached the Headmaster's house. From the highway, there is a red mud structure with an unglassed window, like an abandoned shop, and a fence made of reeds with a splendid grass archway leading to the yard.
"Welcome! Welcome, my friend," came the jovial voice and smile before I was blinded by the yellow corporate T-shirt for MTN, a local cell phone company. I barely noticed half a dozen or so dusty clothed men camouflaged against the russet dried mud, sitting in the shade. The man in yellow practically ran to shake my hand in the complex way that is done here, "I am Wilson. I am happy to have you here. Please, sit."
I sat on a wooden bench with some of the other men who may have been in audience with him. In front of us was a table-top nailed onto a stump, and upon it, three or four plastic glasses with a milky-looking brown liquid that was poured from a red plastic facsimile of a tea pot. Wilson wasted no time in explaining, "Here we sell this Zambian Brew," I could hear the capitalization, "It is a fundraiser for the school. My family and I, even we brew this ourselves from corn and sorghum. We sell it for a thousand kwatcha," about twenty cents.
"If I purchased one, would you have one with me?"
"Mm.mmm," a tonal Zambian response that translates roughly into "Uh-huh".
The brew is very difficult to describe, but I will try. Suppose that someone poured a pitcher of stale beer and left it in the sun all day until it was flat and warmer than the air. Then someone threw in a little corn meal and let it soak; and perhaps stirred in a little bit of wood glue. "It's excellent," I said, "I love it". When men talk business together for the first time, it is always best for the initiate to match the patron drink-for-drink.
It took no time for the conversation to switch to education. We laughed at the similarities of the public school systems in Zambia and Ontario — new initiatives like new socks, changed well before the effectiveness of the older systems can be demonstrated; difficulties in implementing truly good new ideas (or truly good old ideas that were never popular with the faculty); perennial lack of funding for programs, but seemingly infinite funding for non-classroom infrastructure. And, of course, the stinging sense that while the public can agree in principle that education is a good thing, no one seems able to come to consensus about its ultimate aims. Parents who like the idea of their kids being educated but have no ambition to be a part of that process.
So the chief challenge in Zambia, if what emerged from the conversation between Wilson and me is any indication, can be reduced to the fact that students need to write these board exams. I've seen them. In the first place, they're only in English, and the English level of children at Kibombomene is very low. Secondly, the tests themselves are not constructed well; one must understand English at a very nuanced level to have a hope of knowing what some of the questions are asking. I doubt many Ontario students could pass them.
The result of the conversation was a very cordial mutual invitation to work together to develop and coordinate our programs so that they were complementing each other.
What is the ultimate goal of education? Capital worth? Understanding of the world? Striving for peace?
All true, but none true enough. The goal is, or ought to be, emancipation. Providing a choice. Allow people to name their worlds and move within them freely, and let them make up their own minds.
Call me an optimist, but five Zambian Brews later and I think we're closer to that ideal for the people of Kibombomene.
No comments:
Post a Comment