Schools in Mwanza

Our Mwanza contact, Dinah, was also able to arrange visits to both a primary and secondary school. The primary school had 370 students with 14 teachers. The kindergarten class was over 40 students, sitting on a tarp on a dirt floor with only one poster of vowels on the front wall. The children seem very happy, but I don't know how much learning goes on in these conditions.

Dinah made a presentation to the classroom teacher (money from her mother in Gimli) that goes straight to this classroom. Every penny gets right to the source this way; no administration fees come off! Anyone interested in making direct donations this way? I will talk to you about this when we get home.

We then went to a grade 5 classroom. They had desks but they were broken down and often 3 students to one desk, again with a dirt floor The students showed us some of their work. No such thing as a hard cover textbook, just some softcover books that looked well used. Mostly the students did assignments in notebooks off of the blackboard where even chalk is not in abundance. All primary education is conducted in Swahili These teaching conditions were more primitive than what I witnessed in either Belize or Costa Rica.

The secondary school classes, grades 7 - 12, are all conducted in English. Passing from one grade to the next is decided by standardized national exams. In order to pass the students have to obtain at least 30%. When I visited a grade 10 science class I could see that the content of their work was very high level - studying atomic theory, molar mass, etc. But when I tried to talk to the students I found they really did not know English. Were they understanding any of the work they were copying so nicely into their notebooks? I doubt it. Not only is language a problem, but these science students have never even seen a beaker, much less ever done a science experiment. Sigh!! What good is content without understanding??

To top it all off there are gender issues as well. Girls are expected to help out at home making meals, cleaning, getting water which may be a long distance away, etc. Generally girls do not have time to do homework. Boys usually get more rest and have time to do homework and consequently do better at school.