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.