Village School

written Tuesday, 22 May 2007

 

 

I was invited to go to the village school this morning to observe, so I went for about three hours and sat in on a class.   The school is a two-room concrete building with a metal roof (it gets hot in there!).  There are two classes, one for kids about 7-10 years old, and one for kids about 10-14 years old.  Normally there are two teachers, one for each class, but apparently one of the teachers has been sick for several months, so right now the other teacher is teaching both classes, giving one class an assignment to work on while he goes to the other class.

 

I sat in on the older kids' class, where they were learning French and algebra.  The kids had one textbook to read from (I think it was for French), but mainly the teacher wrote questions and problem on the chalkboard for the kids to copy down and work on.

 

I asked the teacher if the students learn other subjects as well, such as history and science, and he said yes, but I got the feeling that the answer is really no, or at least that there is not much emphasis put on those subjects.

 

But it seems that Western education isn't valued very much here.  Most kids go to primary school, but most girls drop out in their early teens to help out at home or to get married, and boys only go for a few years longer.   I tried asking one of my brothers, who is about 13, what he wants to be when he grows up, but he just answered as all the men and boys I've talked to here have - he wants to go to America.  I tried asking him what sort of job he would want to do if he could go to America, or what he will do if he can't make it to the US, but he didn't have any answers.   I think that is a big problem herer - everyone wants to emigrate, and no one has a backup plan (besides subsistence farming).