Education

A while ago someone asked me what I thought Africa’s biggest need was. After a day of thinking about it, I decided that in Guinea, at least, the greatest deficit is in education. 

When Guinea was given their independence from France, the new president, Sekou Toure kicked all the foreigners out and adopted Communist policies as a way to protect Guinean culture. 

(In Guinea, development often battles culture and tradition. Consider wells-a great cause that Matt Damon is big on. A neighborhood well is a huge social asset. As development progresses, more people have wells and a small part of communal life fractures. The same goes sometimes for phone service, internet, electricity, etc. This is not a criticism of Damon’s critical project-just a suggestion that solutions to today’s problems aren’t as simple as the sales pitch makes them sound. Ask me what I’ve learned about mosquito nets, sometime.)

One of the things Sekou Toure did to preserve Guinean identity was to do away with French as a national language. If you lived in Kankan, you would attend school in Maninka. If your family moved to Macenta when you were in 3rd grade, you would be expected to start school in Toma. If they moved again to Labe when you were in 7th grade, you would be trying to enter 8th grade in another foreign language—Pular. A shaky foundation for a country to rely on for education.

French has been re-instated as the national language but new problems have arisen. Teachers are not very well paid (and sometimes go months without receiving their salaries). One of our young leader friends, Jonas, is an adjunct History Professor at the U of KK. He and his wife are one of those statistics you hear about living on his $60/month salary. $2/day for 2 people. 

In addition, another friend of ours tells us that they have had as many as 300 third graders in a class. He says when it’s time to change classes, kids will throw their backpack into the classroom so they can sit where it lands and be guaranteed a spot. Imagine trying to control 300 eight year olds! And imagine, statistically speaking, how many of them would have learning disabilities and behavior problems. Furthermore, teachers are expected to give monthly exams, both written and oral for each student.

So the reality is that to control the students, teachers often resort to a “repeat after me” teaching approach. Students can often quote pages of information verbatim and recite their times tables but not know how many mangoes they will have if you took 2 of their 5.

But would you really hold back 50 of your students if you know you have another 300 coming in next year and you haven’t been paid (your tiny salary) in 2 months? Teachers sometimes end up selling grades. The final exam is at 4pm: at 3pm students may start showing up and paying $1 or $2 for passing grades. The teacher gets paid, doesn’t have to grade 300 exams, and the students pass.

As a result, some university graduates can’t construct a well-written sentence. Last week I saw a professor get out his calculator to figure out how much it would cost to photocopy 40 pages at $0.25 per page. He owns the photocopy business.

BUT, every skill and piece of knowledge that sticks in these students’ brains, is often more than their parents ever got. So maybe it’s still progress.

Last week we went to visit Katie and Kelsey’s classes at The American Reading Room at the University of Kankan. The US Embassy runs the program. Although a lot of the content is vocabulary, there is also a heavy focus on American culture. 

We also attended David Moriba’s (Hannah’s French teacher) English class where we saw an excellent lecture (in English!) on Lesson Planning for future English teachers.

I’ll close with some hope: When David Guilavogui mentioned that the nearby village of Sabadou-Baranama had no physics teacher, Jonas (mentioned above) said, “That’s unacceptable. How will they pass their exams? Tomorrow I will rearrange my schedule and talk to Soumou, who teaches Physics. These kids must have a teacher.”

We’ve mentioned this before, but now Soumu rides to Sabadou-Baranama with Jonas every Friday to teach two 4 hour sessions for free while Jonas arranges sports events and some history lessons. Remember, Jonas makes $60 a month. What's holding you back from serving?

*Other photos: One of our favorite breakfasts, the garage where we changed our moto oil, clearing the new WorldVenture property for sand/gravel delivery.