Ujamaa

I have now officially finished teaching in Ngara, and am now writing from my Dar hotel room. In my last post I talked about the way district education officials could improve education in their districts, but ended by suggesting that real change in the education need to come from the top for significant improvement in the quality of education that students receive. Obviously there are many ways in which the education system could completely reorder itself, which honestly might not be the worst idea, but in this post I will discuss smaller, more easily implemented, changes that could dramatically improve the quality of education that Tanzanian Secondary School students receive.

First, the curriculum needs to be overhauled. In recent years a much larger percentage of students have begun going to secondary school, though they do not have the ability to learn the highly rigorous secondary school curriculum. In fact, this is the vast majority of secondary school students in Tanzania. Most of the curriculum might be characterized as university prep, and is not relevant for that vast majority of students. Perhaps this curriculum might be kept at a few boarding schools across the country, but for most students it is irrelevant. Most students need to stick to basics, and these basics should be taught as simply as possible, using simple language.

Indeed, as it works now students who know almost no English at all are learning Civics, History, Geography, Physics, and five other subjects. I say learning, but really they are memorizing because they don’t know most of the words used in these subjects. So, second, if English is to continue to be the language of instruction at all secondary schools, it either needs to begin with more seriousness at the primary level, or secondary school students need a year of English intensive so they are equipped to handle other subjects. And even then, the language used should be kept as simple as possible until students develop higher levels of fluency. Additonally, students are simply learning too many subjects. For most students one science class and one social studies class a year would be sufficient. Basic competency in the areas judged to be most essential and relevant to the lives of students should be emphasized, and the curriculum should be mindful of the fact that most students live in extremely rural areas, often without electricity.

Third, the exam system needs to be overhauled. Most of the exams are a bad measures of student ability, and students who barely demonstrate competency over material are considered to have passed. For instance, this year for students to “pass” their Form II exam to move on to Form II they had to average 30% in all their subjects. There is no point in passing students who have demonstrated the understood 30% of the material, especially when large sections of the test are multiple choice: simple probability suggests that for every multiple choice question one had a 25% chance of getting it right. Combined with a more manageable curriculum, exams should be simplified, and students should have to demonstrate mastery of important concepts to pass. And at the level of individual schools, students should demonstrate an overall level of competency to be able to move up a Form at the end of the school year. For instance, a student who scores under 20% on all their exams should not be allowed to continue their studies.

Finally, the national education system should implement some of the suggestions I suggested in my last post for improving education at the district level. There are many ways to improve the quality of education students receive in Tanzania, and these musings are far from exhaustive, but I think they represent a good starting point in changing things for the better. Obviously I’m not in a position to implement any of these suggestions, but I didn’t want to be so negative about education in Tanzania without offering some real and tangible suggestions about how it might be improved.

There will be at least two more blog posts before I officially close out this blog, but I don’t think they will be making it to the internet until at least June 10, and maybe not until later in June after I return to the states. I have some vacation to enjoy!

I mentioned a while back that I was going to send a letter with feedback to the District Education Officer in Ngara. I gave him that letter a couple weeks ago, and have yet to receive a response. The letter provided some suggestions about how he might be able to make some changes to improve the quality of education that students receive in Ngara District, recognizing the limitations of being a district official in an educational system that is itself the main impediment to improving the quality of education in Tanzania. Still, there is a lot that could be done at the district level that would probably significantly improve education. Obviously this is specific to my experience, but conversations with other volunteers lead me to believe a lot of these suggestions are applicable to districts across Tanzania.

First, Ngara District officials have a lot of power to positively impact “English only education.” District officials can set an example for all the people working in Secondary Schools across the district by conducting business in English. For example, at a district teachers meeting most of the seminars were conducted in Swahili (despite the fact that one of the sessions was on the importance of “English only education”) and business in the education office office is also conducted in Swahili. If the district set the example of an “English only” office, it could positively impact “English only education.”. As it stands now, teachers do not use English at school, and many even teach their subjects in Swahili, despite the fact that all the national exams are in English. This is partially because teachers are not comfortable using English, and their use of English is not promoted. It is not uncommon to see teachers telling students to use English, while they continue to use Swahili. The students have no example to follow. Indeed, the teachers themselves have no example to follow. If all district education business was conducted in English (except where impossible, as in dealing with new students, parents and the general community), it would set a fantastic example, all the way to the bottom.

Second, district officials have power to ensure that teachers are arriving at school on time, and teaching their classes. Teacher lateness is very common, and many teachers do not teach all their periods. While teachers are supposed to arrive at 7:30, many don’t begin to show up until ten minutes after that, and some consistently show up a full 30 minutes late. Classes begin at 7:40, 10 minutes after teachers are supposed to arrive. It is not uncommon for the headmaster or secondmaster to sign the attendance book, writing “Seen, 7:30.” at 8:00, effectively legitimizing all the teachers who arrive late, yet write “7:30” as their arrival time. An accurate enforcement mechanism could be required by the district office. It is also possible for the district office to request the headmaster or secondmaster do random checks, going to a classroom when a teacher is supposed to be teaching, to ensure that they are actually teaching. Both of these measures would ultimately need to be enforced by the district, but I think they could greatly improve teacher performance.

Third, the district office should work to improve the quality of instruction that students receive. It is not uncommon for me to enter a classroom to find a student writing the notes, from a book, that a teacher has requested the student write during his or her period. This is not teaching, or an acceptable teaching practice. I think the district can play a role in promoting improved teaching methods by not only sending observers to watch classes, but also by creating a teacher quality initiative, where teachers are required to observe their peers, writing feedback for their peers, and evaluations for the district. This too would initially require enforcement, but ultimately could have a very positive impact.

Fourth, classes are consistently, and unnecessarily, canceled for a variety of meetings or special events. It is rare that a week goes by without one (or more) of my classes being canceled for one reason or another. For example, one day some district officials came to Ngara Secondary for a meeting and the first period after tea break was canceled as a result. The topic of the meeting was how to improve Form IV results. One way to improve results is for classes not to be canceled for staff meetings, or for anything that can be scheduled during the many afternoons when classes are not in session (clubs, religion, debate, and sports and games). Since most of these activities are conducted without teacher involvement, it makes a lot of sense to require that meetings and special events be scheduled during these time slots.

Those were my four primary suggestions, at least two of which would be relatively easy to implement. I expect nothing will change (for a variety of reasons), just as I expect the education system will also not change in any fundamental way for the foreseeable future.

In America there has been a shift towards emphasizing critical thinking in education. Indeed, I remember at some point in high school one of my teachers saying, “In 10 years I doubt you’ll remember many details from the books we talk about in this class, but if you work hard in this class you will remember how to think critically about what you read.” Seven years later I do remember some details, but he was right: the details aren’t that important, but learning how to think critically is. This is one of the major failures of Tanzanian education: students are required to remember, but only in the rarest of circumstances are they asked to think critically. Thus, it is a skill most students do not learn, and indeed is a skill that many Tanzanians who have gone through school (all the way to university) also lack.

The subjects where you’d think critical thinking would be most essential (civics and history particularly) are set up in a way that completely discourages critical thinking of any kind. The textbooks for these courses lay out reasons and explanations for historical events that students are required to memorize and explain, without engaging students’ ability to think about these events, or analyze the material. The teachers for these subjects expect students to remember these explanations, and reproduce them on a test, ideally, word for word.

Part of the reason for this is that students’ English ability is so low that it’s easier for them to remember words they don’t understand and then write them all out on the test later in the semester, but additionally students just aren’t encouraged to think for themselves. One day a teacher was complaining to me about having to teach about slavery to his students. “It is just not important.” he said, “they don’t care about it because slavery doesn’t exist anymore, and it is not relevant to their lives” (this is paraphrased, and was much less elegant in its original form). I said, “but you can make it relevant to them, you can ask questions of them: ‘What do you think it would have been like to be a slave?’ ‘How would you feel if you were slave?’ ‘Would you own a slave? Why or why not?’ And,” I said, “slavery doesn’t need to be a topic only in the distant past – you can talk about the owning of people in modern times: sex slavery, people not having rights. These are all derivatives that might make students more interested and critically engaged in the topic.”

This wasn’t something he had ever thought of doing, and even though I suggested it, I suspect it is something he won’t ever do. Most of the teachers at my school, like the students, are also unable to critically discuss or analyze the world around them. While they may have details memorized, or even reasons memorized, they can’t think outside the box to try to solve the problems they are presented with. They rely on methods and techniques they are familiar with, and are resistant to change, or to different ways of considering questions. This is a legacy of their own education, and is certainly not unique to Tanzania, but is especially problematic here.

Take a conversation I had the other day as an example:

Teacher: This new plan to stream our students by ability is not good.
Me: Why?
Teacher: [something incomprehensible]
Me: I don’t understand, can you explain?
Teacher: Well, the students, it is not good for them.
Me: But why, can you give an example?
Teacher: The students are treated differently by the teachers.
Me: Yes, but isn’t that a good thing? It means teachers can challenge their best students, and give the worst extra help.
Teacher: Well, yes, here it is.
Me: Wait, but you just said it wasn’t.
Teacher [now in a lecturing tone]: I meant in primary school, here it is good because you can challenge the best students, and give the worst extra help.
Me: Right.

And this is a teacher with a bachelors. Obviously not all teachers are like this, but it’s common enough that you can understand why most students would never gain any critical thinking skills, and why a tradition of students not being taught to critically think would be perpetuated by teachers who lack that same ability.

Every Monday morning, after singing the national anthem and the school song, it is time for inspection. This means that the teacher on duty, the discipline master, or sometimes the secondmaster, inspects students along with other prefects. The inspection focuses on a number of things, but every week, depending on who is doing the inspecting, the focus changes. Sometimes it is fingernail length, sometimes it is uniform cleanliness, sometimes it is uniform patches, sometimes it is trouser size, sometimes it is sock color, sometimes it is shoe type, and sometimes it is whether the students who have ties have tied them correctly.

Every week students fail inspection. When fingernails are too long, those students are taken out of line, where they immediately establish a nail-biting brigade, furiously attempting to reduce the length of their fingernails, so they can avoid getting beat. When uniforms are unclean (and it takes a lot for a uniform to be considered unclean), students frantically try to rub out the offending spots, so they can avoid getting beat. When students don’t have the required uniform patch, they are required to remove their white shirts so a patch can be applied (ok, this only happened once, and was quickly countermanded by the discipline master, but there were girls walking around in their hole-filled sweaters with no shirt on underneath). When they guys are wearing trousers that are too tight they are harassed and made fun of, and told to get them made more loose. When students are not wearing the appropriate socks (for girls, white, for boys, white with two black stripes), they are yelled at and beat. When students are not wearing black shoes they are beat. And, when the students who wear ties – a select few – have not tied them, or tied them incorrectly, they are told “Tie your tie, or your tie will tie will tie you!”

Now, it is something of a mystery what exactly this means. It is a favorite expression of one teacher in particular, but the other teachers seem to find it hilarious as well. I guess the implication is that if you fail to tie your tie, you will get tied up in the consequences of not tying your tie. Indeed, one day many of the prefects did not have their ties tied, and as a result they spent the first two periods of the day cutting grass. They hated this, because the prefects typically do not have to do physical labor, as they are prefects.

However, since there are about 700 students, every week only one area is the central focus of the inspection, and most of the students manage to escape without being inspected. And, for the rest of the week, unless you are particularly unlucky and manage to catch the eye of an annoyed teacher, you can get away with many of these infractions. For instance, sandals are not allowed (boys must wear a closed toe shoe, and girls must wear that or a black slipper), but as Monday turns into Tuesday and Tuesday into Wednesday it is not uncommon to see shoes turn into sandals, for ties to get looser around the neck, and uniforms to begin getting very dirty. Indeed, most students only wash their uniform once a week, if that. But, come next Monday there is a chance to, yet again, fail the inspection, get beat, or be warned “tie your tie, or your tie will tie you!”

I realized last Friday, after some particularly successful classes with my Form I students, that I have only four weeks left of normal class with them. This was a very sad moment for me, because of everything I have done here I think I have had the biggest impact on the Form I students, and I will miss them a lot. A big part of of me wishes I could teach them for all four years of their time at secondary school. So many of them have so much potential, and I worry that much of it will be wasted.

Like all classes, there are strong students, and weaker ones, but even among my weaker students there is such a passion and excitement for learning. Teaching other Forms, this passion was much reduced: students were far less excited about learning. It feels great to ask a question and have almost all the class raise their arms, many saying “teacher!,” “sir!,” or “Mr. Alex!” in attempt to have me call on them. You think by now they would know that I only call on the students who silently raise their hands, without standing up in their seat, snapping their fingers, or shouting at me, but in almost every class I have to chide a student, “I will not call on you unless you are quiet.” This behavior, as annoying as it sometimes is, exemplifies their youthful excitement. It is not altogether uncommon for me to call on a student by pointing at them, or raising my eyebrows, only to have that student and the two students sitting next to him/her all stand up and try to answer simultaneously.

Mostly, they are almost all just really, really, cute. Even the obnoxious ones who can’t stop moving around, talking, or trying to answer questions they don’t know the answer to are great. Some case studies to illustrative why I love my Form I students follow (names have been changed to protect privacy):

Sara is one of my smartest students. She is also the class monitor, meaning it is her responsibility to have me sign the class journal (a book where all the teachers indicate what lesson they taught), keep attendance, and bring me exercise books for marking. Every day Sara fills in all the relevant details (date, topic, subtopic, teacher name), that in all my other classes I have to fill in myself. All I need to do in her class is sign my name. Also, she is just incredibly bright.

Clara is one of those students who tries really hard, striving for perfection, but is rarely able to meet that goal. She is definitely a smart student, so she is always incredibly disappointed when she gets an answer wrong. I will go over to mark her exercise book, and at the first “x” she will say “teacher!” in this disappointed voice, as if I have it in for her. Also, when she doesn’t understand, she raises her hand and says “teacher, I don’t understand,” while she gives me an angry glare.

Steve is all over the place, and rarely a day passes when I don’t have to say “Steve, sit down!” or “Steve, stop bothering ____!” or “Steve, be quiet!” or “Steve, stop cheating!” Despite all this, Steve is very lovable, and you can tell that he just has a ton of energy he doesn’t know what to do with. And, even though he is far from the smartest student, he is always trying to improve, even if he has no idea what he is saying. Frequently, he will do everything in his power to get called on, and when I do eventually call on him he will stand up, look confused, and blurt out something entirely wrong, resulting in fits of giggling from most of the students in class. He has so much energy that I worry other teachers will discipline him to the point where he loses his passion for learning.

Justin is a diligent, committed, and focused student who has to work incredibly hard to understand a topic, but once he has understood, you can tell he will simply never forget it. Unfortunately, it takes him so long to understand something that I fear he, like Steve, will be one of those students that the system fails to educate.

I will miss these four, and about the 120 other Form I students who I have come to love and appreciate (the other 40 or so are, unfortunately, a nameless mass of especially poor students who I am simply unable to help in this system). I hope that their forward progress will continue, hopefully with another WorldTeach volunteer this July. Though, as I have recently learned, it is possible my school will not get another volunteer.

The teaching I do in Tanzania is one of the most rewarding elements of my experience here, but since my arrival I have been frustrated with the wide range of abilities in my classes. This is especially problematic in class with Form III and IV, as the syllabus takes on more advanced English topics like essay writing, and reading analysis, while many of the students in these forms still struggle to write a simple sentence. In Form IV, for example, I’d say about 50 of 200 students are at a point where their language skills are developed enough to write an essay, and most of that 50 still struggle with writing. Even in Form I, the wide range of abilities is difficult, despite the fact that I am teaching them basic English. So, for the past 3 months I have been advocating for streaming students by ability.

This advocacy has mostly taken the form of having conversations with a variety of teachers, the “academic office,” and the headmaster, about how streaming would be beneficial to not only the best students, but also the worst. My strategy has been a form of mild advocacy, characterized my consistently approaching the topic from a variety of starting points (typically brought up by teachers themselves), making the argument about how in the end streaming students would be better for everyone involved. Specifically, I had been emphasizing re-streaming the Form I students, as the Academic Mistress had told me they were going to be re-streamed anyway, as the streams were haphazardly assigned based on when students reported for school. But, I was also advocating more generally, emphasizing also the benefits for Form IV students, who I think will face the same failures of last years Form IV students unless the teachers try something new.

Most of the forms at my school have 3-4 streams (classes), each stream containing students of a wide level of ability. For instance, in one of Form I streams I have a student that scored 89 on her midterm, and a student who scored 1. This makes teaching class very difficult, as the more advanced students get bored, and the least advanced students don’t know what the hell is going on, as I typically aim my lessons at the ability level of the middle-of-the-road students.

After three months of advocacy, I was starting to feel like nothing was ever going to happen. Mostly, people responded positively to the ideas I was presenting, and the Academic Mistress even said “I will talk to the headmaster, but I will re-stream them anyway” but of course nothing happened. After I marked the midterms for my Form I students I decided it couldn’t hurt to write her a letter, specifically outlining why I thought it was a good idea. Here is the letter, written in a Tanzanian style, and emphasizing the issues I thought would be the most compelling for the Academic Mistress (ultimately I gave her a copy I wrote by hand):

STREAMING FORM ONE STUDENTS BY ABILITY

As we have discussed, I am an advocate of streaming students by ability. At Ngara Secondary this would have a number of benefits, and I think has the potential to greatly improve test scores not only among the strongest students, but also among students with weaker English. The following are some important reasons to seriously consider streaming students by ability:

1. It positions the strongest students to help students closest to the ability achieve success, and creates a competitive academic environment for those academic students.
2. It creates an overall more competitive academic environment, as students will realize that their success or failure will mean moving up, or down, a stream as a result of their exam performance (I would suggest that they be re-streamed at the start of each academic year based on class rankings).
3. It allows teachers to teach to the unique abilities and challenges that each stream, with different average levels of ability, presents.
4. It allows the streams to move at different speeds, depending on the students’ ability and understanding of topic material. Grouped by ability, each stream would have a different pace that would be better adapted to the average ability of each class.
5. It allows the weakest students to get more help, as the average ability in the weakest stream would be much lower, so these students’ lack of understanding would have to be addressed, rather than allowing strong students to dictate the pace of the class.

Obviously (if you have read some of my previous posts) not all the teachers would actually adapt their teaching the different levels of ability-based streams, and probably some teachers would simply not bother with these lower-level streams, but on balance I think it’s a great idea because most of the students who will end up in these lower-level streams aren’t learning very much anyway.

I gave the Academic Mistress the letter, mentioned the topic, and said she should read it at her convenience. I was leaving for spring break in a few days, but on the next day both of the teachers who comprise the “academic office” told me they though it was a good idea. I left for break (missing four days of “school” – “school” because no classes were held on those days), and returned, without much hope of ever seeing the school stream students by ability.

But, this last Friday (the end of the first week of classes following the break) the “academic office” re-streamed Form IV, and it sounds like the other streams will follow. I have no idea why they waited so long (or even what specifically was the final impetus for the re-streaming – for all I know it could be something the district has suggested), but this is Tanzania, so I’m not going to question it, and have simply resolved to be happy that progress is being made.