Building from the Top Down

One of the other schools I was able to visit in Arusha was a private Secondary school for orphaned youth called Peace House Africa.

There motto is ‘Educate. Nurture. Innovate.’

My first question for a school, organization or non-profit is always, who is funding? Who is behind this mission? This response alone is a far-reaching indicator about the nature of the work.
Peace House was started by a missionary and his wife who had sold off a successful bioengineering company and wanted to invest it into children in need in Tanzania. They worked together with the support of the Lutheran Diocese, a Rotary group from Minnesota and many short-term American volunteers and private donors – which they call volontourists. In just three years they have built a beautiful, well kempt campus about 5 miles outside of town, which now houses and educates 244 students. That is a large number of students. Each student was screened, in order to ensure that the applicant was indeed parentless and/or in need of support in order to successfully complete school.

Unfortunately the students were in the midst of an entire consecutive week of exams during my visit, so I was not able to visit any classes. Peeking in the rooms I saw upward of 40 desks per classroom, each pupil studiously leaned over their test. Tanzania, like many other countries in the world suffers from over-testing due to National requirements. In very much the same way that ‘No Child Left Behind’ surged the frequency and significance of multiple-choice tests. Here at Peace House if a student does not stay above 45%, they will be removed from the school and provided school fees for a public school. Of course that does provide incentive to succeed, but there are many other contingent factors that determine their ability to success. Like, who are the teachers? And are they being adequately prepared to think? Or just to memorize what will be on the test?

In Tanzania, like many other countries, the teachers themselves are not exceedingly qualified. They themselves have gone through an education, even higher education, that consists mostly of rote learning. They are teaching using English medium, yet, perhaps they never mastered the language due to poor instruction. I was able to speak to the Peace House Head Mistress, a Tanzanian woman who has worked in schools for over 15 years, she harped on this issue saying that one of the greatest challenges is hiring teachers who are ready to learn.

“You have to really cook someone.” she said, further articulating the need for teacher training. She used many buzz-words like, ‘student-centered learning,’ making ‘problem solvers’ and ‘critical thinkers.’ But these are words that are all too often thrown around, but very rarely put to use in such societies where the classroom modus opperandi is so deeply ingrained. I can see in her face that she struggles with this. Despite the challenges of classroom dynamics and teaching to the National examination, the school is doing a thorough job at keeping the students engaged on many other levels. They have sports teams, academic clubs and extra curricular activities as well as a very impressive school paper. Each day there are student led devotions and a requirement to attend Church.
And the Muslim students? I asked.

Yes, we have some – but they have to attend Church too, said the sweet
American girl who gave me a tour.

“We want to be the best school in the country…Even in East Africa.” The Head Mistress said to me with a smile. And you can feel that they do, they are quite obviously working hard to get there. And as I am looking around and reading, I am wishing that I wasn’t such a skeptic – yet this is a very stunning example of a top-down approach to school building. First there was money, a school and hundreds of students, and now they are slowly building their mission, their concept. This is not to say that they are not doing unbelievably noble and much needed work. They also have a scholarship program that has been providing school fees and uniforms to disadvantaged students for over 7 years. They are making an impact.

One of their volunteers was delighted to tell me more about another school in the area that was also started by a foreigner, a woman I once met on the subway in New York. The Indigenous Education Foundation of Tanzania is an entirely different model, on a much smaller scale. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to visit the school myself, but the girl who spoke of it starkly stated that it was a successful, bottom-up approach. She said they were certainly not working with so many students, but that the students were lively, engaged and had highly impressive English. When a program begins with the students in mind, and builds slowly up, it is much easier to manage, to maintain and evolve the mission. The woman who started it is often still there, and has decided to employ numerous overseas teachers, which is a debatable choice, but surely integrates new models of learning and better English.

I think Peace House holds immense potential, yet like other development initiatives it is always worrying when a program is so dependent on private donors and outside sources. They are definitely looking for ways to become more self-sustained, to increasingly grow and cooperate on a local level. This want is well represented in the development of their organic garden, which some of the students choose to work on. The school has a great deal of very beautiful land and many mouths to feed, including those who are HIV positive and must eat a balanced meal – this is one solid step in the right direction towards springing upward, from the ground up.