Saturday, February 23, 2013

Respecting Cultural Norms (a relflection)


I meet my partner teacher in the staff room (a room about 20x30 with school desks around the perimeter for each teacher, a large table in the center of the room and a TV- yes- and it is on all the time- I sit and watch him copy notes from the text he is using for East African History- literally word for word with only some additions of his own.  We then walk across the courtyard (the big grassy/dirt area) to the classroom where the seventy-six Senior 1 boys are waiting for us. You see in Uganda, the teachers do not have a classroom that the students come to, the student stay in the classroom and wait for a teacher to come- sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t- but the boys stay just the same.  They stay in one big room, rows of benches with maybe eight inches of writing surface attached and they sit three to a desk. All have notebooks of varying sizes and styles, and blue pens. My partner teacher brings a chair for me to sit in and then proceeds to dictate the lesson to the boys, occasionally writing whole paragraphs on the blackboard (and by that I mean the concrete which extends out from the wall by about a ¼ inch and is painted black), with chalk- yes chalk.  When I say dictate- I mean saying each sentence or part sentence over and over four or five times while the boys write furiously in their notebooks. This goes on for either forty or eighty minutes. Then another teacher arrives (or not) and we head back to the staff room to wait for the next class that he teaches. My teacher has three sections of Senior 1 (basically 7th grade, but the boys can be anywhere from 11-16ish) and three sections of Senior 4 (that would be 10th grade or age 15ish to 18ish). He meets each sections three times during the week for 40 minutes- sometimes the blocks are back to back, making an 80 minute class.
The reason for the age range is that some boys either missed some years of school because they were abducted by the LRA and became child soldiers, or were in some other way affected by the war, or they could not pay the fees to attend; so they missed school until they could pay again. There is no free school in Uganda- all the government schools cost, the boarding ones, like cost more-as the parents have to supplement the food. The government pays about 15cents per student per day for food. For girls, missing school once a month because they do not have sanitary pads is common. This puts them behind, if they get far enough behind, they quit or are forced to quit because their parents will not pay if they do not perform.
It is interesting to be a teacher in the era of globalization. In many respects we do live in a global village. We all eat, sleep, love, learn, have families, listen to music, enjoy friends, work, play, and try to get through each day the best we can. In other ways, we live very different lives. This was most recently brought to my attention because my eighteen year old daughter, who is spending the year in Senegal, just came face to face with the kind of violence, that while not uncommon in America- is condemned- but in Senegal is culturally accepted.  Her host mom beat her host sister so violently that the daughter lost some of her hair and had a broom broken over her head; all because she had not cooked Emma’s dinner.  There are many cultures that accept violence towards each other as normal. As a visiting teacher in Uganda, I had to stand by while children were caned. You might wonder why I stood by, why could I not just step in front of the teacher with the cane and stop them. As teachers in America we are federally mandated to report suspected child abuse. It is our job to help kids, not just to learn, but to show them how important each and every one of them is, what their potential is, and to believe in them - sometimes when no one else does. Charles Leadbeater said, “Your vantage point determines everything you see.” This is extremely important to remember when considering comparative education.
Where we come from, our own cultural norms, biases, and experiences will influence how we interpret the data. Comparing educational models and outcomes is not just about statistics, it is about real people who live very different lives, in cultures we may or may not understand. Our definitions of education may also vary and I agree that expanding the definition to include non-traditional elements is vitally important. Education must be made relevant to the users and include traditional, non-traditional, public, private, teachers, students and families. Having an overreaching goal of education for all, or lifelong education are the big umbrellas under which we can compare educational models. But such a comparison needs to account for the many cultural, environmental, and resource differentials that exist globally.
Education is not a miracle cure as has been pointed out by a number of authors and studies.  Pouring more money into a broken system, a new idea, or technology for the sake of technology is not an efficient use of our resources. “It is not enough simply to get the technical details right; reforms must also navigate the challenges of the nation’s political economy” (World Bank).  Our best resource as teachers is each other. Supporting each other, learning from and teaching each other, providing resources for each other and most of all trying to understand the unique issues we all face and not apply the West is best attitude to education in the developing world. I may not agree with the cultural norm in another culture, and it may be right to change it, but I do have to respect the cultural norm in that country. What I did in the caning situation was to have a discussion with the teachers about why they cane, why they cane even though it is now illegal in Uganda to do so, and what other methods/punishment might yield the same results. I learned from them, they learned from me.
Change does not happen because we wish it, or pray for it, or donate a room full of computers to a school with no electricity. Change happens because we set an example, we educate, and we work within the cultural norms to make a personal connection with other human beings on the planet in the hope that we can learn from each other

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