When Ethan Kinsey isn’t on Safari he is training candidate guides to become experts in their field. At the moment he is working with about 20 guys, doing both field and in-class training about animals, birds and ecosystems. Yesterday he was describing the difficulty of teaching his Tanzanian men, despite their keen minds and aspiration to learn. He explains that they haven’t been taught to read, and discuss in order to understand. Their experience in the classroom has consisted of fear and memorization, Ethan states. It makes it difficult to have engaging conversations about the concept they are learning because Ethan doesn’t teach by writing definitions on the board to be repeated back verbatim. He wants them to deliberate and to really understand the impressions beyond the words. He struggles with knowing how to test them – as his style of teaching is so new, many of them are not performing well.
This archaic method of rote learning can be witnessed in classrooms across the African continent. Most times they are taught in English, and like the language, rote learning is a legacy of colonial times. The teacher dictates, writing the lesson on the board – the students copy down the notes. The teacher asks a question, the pupils, perhaps all in unison, upon standing, will recite the answer exactly as it was written on the board. Maybe they will raise their hands, one will be called on and say something slightly different, perhaps their own take on the word, or changing the order of the response. ‘No’ The teacher will proclaim, calling on students until the satisfactory answer is recited. In Ghana and other countries on the Gold coast they clap for one another when the answer is correct – there are different melodies for the different regions of the country.
As the majority of learning is done in this manner many do not have a real grasp of how to read and understand. Literacy, Ethan and I discuss, has such a broad scope. While some have learned to read, they may not have been taught how to makes sense of the words they put together. They may not be able to defend their opinion. Not all schools in Tanzania are like this, but the majority of the government schools are. Here in Arusha though, there is more diversity of people and therefore, more reach in kinds of schools. There are three International schools, and numerous privately funded ones. So much of the curriculum is based on the values of the benefactors. In one International school, which used to be the Greek school, the children are reading by age six and taught by comparatively progressive, western teachers. I met a few teachers of this school at a gathering of young expatriates, friends of Ethan. Their teaching experience is relatively democratic and innovative compared to the frustrations of others, who work in local schools and orphanages, where the children do not ask questions, even if they do not understand, even if they are failing.
Ethan goes on to tell me that even in University, the structure of learning remains the same. I believe it, last year, on my education course in Ghana I was explained that college courses were performed in great lecture halls – with not enough seats. Again, your success did not depend so much on what you read, but what you were able to hear and copy down, word for word in your book, in order to regurgitate the information for the final exam. The people who graduate from these schools are running the country, and government.
Rote learning is so different from progressive, western-style education where you are applauded for thinking outside of the box. But even in our self-proclaimed ‘democratic’ educative system in America, are people really taught to think critically? In many schools, yes, but not in most. In the past decade and with ‘No child left behind’ teachers are forced to stay closely to the curriculum in order to prepare students for multiple-choice examinations. This constant pumping of information leaves little time for free-thinking, for meta-cognition, for discussions and questions. It is a global pandemic in a time when we must be building minds that can think innovatively enough to sustain human development and solve the problems of our era. In order to do this youth will have to resist from harmonizing together the affirmative, “Yes, teacher.” And move toward questioning, “Why?” and “How?” or challenging the teacher when they are told something that is not true. But before that is able to happen we must first eradicate the fear. This will require confidence, first of the teacher then, the students may follow.
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