"teaching in Malawi"

Teacher reviewing a recent physics test with the class. PGSS, Chisitu, Malawi.

During my stay here I've been able to sit in on classes at two very different schools. While I was only at the CDSS Christina's uncle went to I've been told, by Ben Chambers and other students here at PGSS, that what I saw was a very accurate view of how classes are taught at . At these schools, which are usually but not exclusively, located in poor rural areas of Malawi, you'll find large classes (anywhere between 50 and 100 students per class) with a small number of young and poorly trained teachers. I assumed that it was solely due to limited resources at the school's disposal, I assumed that if they'd had enough money, for more class rooms and teachers and books, at some point it end being just like a high school in Europe or the US. Before students here can get something I'd call a good education, something which not only imparts knowledge but also a way of thinking and reasoning which lets one use the knowledge and acquire new knowledge after finishing school, the teaching methodology, and the tests and standards to which students are held, need to change.

PGSS has a reputation as a very good secondary school, many of its alums can be found holding high positions in the government and private industry. Even though it's a boarding school and most of the tuition goes to room and board, What PGSS and the CDSSs have in common though is a style of teaching which is strongly geared towards rote memorization Yesterday I saw a teacher, here at PGSS, try to interact with some of his students. The lesson was about how various geological features, like mountains and valleys, are formed. He wanted to demonstrate how plates moved relative to each other and have the students figure out, by reasoning about what they were seeing, what kinds of formations would result. The students, once they stopped laughing at the silliness of trying to have a demonstration in class, kept looking at the teacher, pens in hand, waiting for him to speak the answer so they could copy it down in their notebooks. I don't know who was more frustrated, the teacher or the students. It was obvious, to me at least, what thought process the teacher was trying to cause, but the students just weren't thinking that way. (nb: i am most certainly not saying the students are unable of critical thinking, just that when they sit down for class that's not at all what they're expecting.)

Books? What books?

I knew even before I got to Malawi that text books were extremely rare. What I hadn't thought about, but should have been painfully obvious, was that if they don't have text books they certainly won't have novels. Some of the students here have never read a novel, and only a very small percentage read books regularly (fiction or non). While it's obvious that there are many students who love to read and write, and I'm sure the teachers would love to ask their students to read and write more, there just aren't enough books. Even if their were enough books to go around there isn't enough paper to write more than a few essays a term. For example: the AGE scholars get 12 80-page (A5 size) notebooks each term, that's a total of 1500 sheets of paper, and that's all the paper they'll use for those three months (other students have a similar amount). It's just enough to take notes which are directly related to their lessons, it's nothing close to what you'd need to have a decent writing class.

On a more personal note I need to take another look at what's going on with the OLPC project. Laptops certainly aren't a silver bullet, but if all the students here could have an virtually infinite supply of pens, paper and books I honestly think that'd be a huge improvement. Would it be better than spending the same amount of money on fertilizer subsidies? I don't know, but I don't see why this has to be an either-or decision. This is also an instance where I would advocate a Brazilian style large scale intellectual property theft, I fail to see the harm in suggesting Malawian students steal copies of books (text books and others) they could never afford to purchase anyway.

ps - i really don't like the way the GIMP processes the colors in Nikon raw files (either too much or green or too much cyan, never the right amount) but there's not much I can do about it from here. I'll just have to live with them as they are until I can back to berlin and use ACR.

this picture was published on wednesday, may 06 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: 24.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/125; iso: 800. this image has the following tags: malawi.