Today we learned about the education system in Senegal...so fascinating. Basically, the thesis was that because the educational system was inherited from France, it has not adapted to the Senegalese reality and therefore it makes it very hard for the Senegalese to succeed in their own society. The main problem is that the language of instruction is French. Senegal alone has about 25 spoken languages, so you can see why this is a problem. Not only are classes in French, but the textbooks are French so Senegalese children may learn that their ancestors have blue eyes. Due to this skewed system, the current educational system is dominated by strikes. This makes it hard for students to get the hours necessary to attend school and pass their tests which allow them to move on to the next level of schooling. In 2008, primary schools had 80 days of strike and teachers only taught 200 hours out of the 730 hours they were supposed to teach. Also, there is a limit on failing, so you have to "rebirth." This basically means that you can pay (illegally) to change your age to 5 years younger so you can retake all the tests. A recent study showed that 34% of children repeat 6th grade. Now, you'd think that the government would implement some reforms, however most of their budget goes to the military. Since 2004, 40% of the government's budget goes to education and in 2004 the Ministry's budget was 235 billion cfa. So, as you can see, education is not highly valued. Because it isn't highly valued, there are numerous other problems such as lack of materials, electricity, teachers, etc. In 2000, on average, three pupils in primary shared one reading book and in some places the student to teacher ratio was 1/180. In addition, in 2005, 81% of primary schools had no electricity, 45% had no toilets, 71% had no fences, and 59% had no running water. These numbers don't even take into account the abandoned and Koranic schools. Schools are most likely abandoned due to flooding and violence; Koranic schools are popular because parents would like to send their children to primary school but don't have the money, so many Koranic schools will take children in and heavily teach them Islam, but they have to beg in the streets as payment (forgive me if that's convoluted). If you can believe, this is about half of what we learned today... I won't even go into the negative effect of SAPs on the educational system and how the Senegalese have to assimilate themselves into French society/culture in order to succeed. I'll save that for another day... which I'm sure y'all are thrilled about :).
(Sorry if that was depressing)... So you might guess that we went to visit some school after our lecture. We visited L'empire des enfants and L'ecole de la rue... both are schools for street children. In general, they take kids off the street and teach them basic skills so that they may return to their families and go to elementary school. In L'empire des enfants, there were about 30 boys that were mostly from the surrounding countries of Senegal... I met two boys from Guinea. Most of the children didn't know any French, so we had to use our one class of Wolof. Turns out I'm pretty good at Wolof. The professor complimented me on my Wolof and told me I should come back and teach there during my stay (totally going to happen). We taught them some English phrases and they showed us their Taekwondo and circus skills. It was awesome! I also got invited to come back and teach the kids how to make friendship bracelets which would be uber interesting. I knew their was a reason why I don't have kids in my family and brought so much embroidery floss.
We then went to L'ecole de la rue where we went to one of the poorest districts in Dakar. It was basically a whole district of cardboard boxes. The school is basically in one of those storage crates that go on the back of trucks or on trains. They had one chalk board and a couple benches, but no paper and nothing to write with. We then walked around the district and met a lot of people. There were two kids that held my hand: one was named "Modumbai" and the other Astou. Astou said she was 11, but I think she was about 8 or 9. She really wanted my rings and my necklace. I tried to tell her they were mine, but she wasn't satisfied. Overall, the experience made me feel incredibly guilty; however, it was very eye-opening. Everyone should experience that once in their life time.
So we then had some time for lunch and I went to Katie's house. It was really nice to eat with another family. They taught us how to make Attaya, which is Senegalese Tea.. then we were late for class... but it worked out though because the Baobab Center is on Africa time.
Sorry, I wrote so much.
A bientot!
No comments:
Post a Comment