"summer school, malawi style."

girl taking notes during class. community day secondary school ???, Boma, Malawi

Today I got to go and sit in on a class at a public secondary school (CDSS) near Christina's house. The school reminded me a lot of my high school. The buildings them selves were simple one store brick rooms with corrugated steel ceilings (ovens basically). There was a small yard in the center with a small garden and a beautiful tree. The teacher was late and kids were milling about, chatting amongst themselves, hoping the teacher would be later so that they could hang out a bit longer.

The teacher, a volunteer teacher named Victor, who's only helping with these pre-exam review lessons, arrived around 2:30 and class began almost immediately. The lesson I got to sit in on was Biology, they were finishing up something they'd started last week on the kidney, the bladder, the intestine and, I think, the colon. The lesson was, more or less, what you'd expect a high school biology lesson to look like. The teacher stood at the front of the class room, explained things, and asked and fielded a few questions. The vast majority of the kids paid attention, some of the them slept or at least had a hard time keeping their eyes open, but nobody goofed off and there wasn't any talking or noise coming from the back of the class. (caveat lector: My presence was certainly was a factor in that class, probably a big factor, but I have no way to quantify how much I changed things)

When thinking about this it's important to keep in mind the number of students per class and the lack of materials. If you want to know all the gory details about how under equipped the Malawian public school system is there are a ton of reports and documents you could go read, it's a sad story and I'm just going to offer up an anecdote or two. I counted around 70 students in this class, and since this was an optional lesson for those students taking exams a normal class would be even larger. There was one text book in the room, which the teacher was using. The students had notebooks where they'd write their own notes. In these notebooks they'd also copy parts of the textbook the teacher thought were important. For example, after a short explanation on how the kidney does whatever the kidney does (I for one was not paying attention) he'd stop and copy a drawing of the kidney out of the text book, the students would then copy this drawing into their notebooks. If there was an important explanation in the textbook he'd copy that onto the board as well. I have no idea how much time is lost to copying things from the textbook to the chalkboard and then to the notebooks, but it's a lot, and I can't imagine how much detail and information is lost in this passage.

There is a fundamental difference between myself as a student, or at least how I remember myself in high school, and Christina that I'd like to point out. When I was in high school most of the students were they because they had to be. While some of us enjoyed it, some of the time at least, it was seen as an obligation, most of the time, and a responsibility on the good days. Talking to Christina and her friends I get the feeling that they actually believe that this education will improve their lives. They go to school, and they study, because they think it will make their lives better and they're ready and willing to invest in themselves. There is no teenage angst in Malawi, they do not waste time or energy rebelling against their parents or the system, and it's a sad fact that these students really want to get a good education but the opportunities and means are few and far between. I had all the opportunities and all the means the world could possibly of offered and didn't really worry about doing the most with them. I had a very large safety net while Christina doesn't, and I didn't have any more drive, or talent, or capability, I was just luckier.

ps - i think it's time to invest in a mosquito net.

this picture was published on monday, april 20 2009. there is a full size version available. this picture was taken with a 24-70mm f/2.8 on a nikon d700. the settings when this was taken were: focal length: 66.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/60; iso: 1600. this image has the following tags: malawi.