Fourth Chapter:
The educational institutions on the island
Writing
this chapter is the most difficult for me. How do I describe the island's
education system without doing any harm to the great efforts of educated and
motivated educators there? I am not an anthropologist and so I will endeavor to
describe things here as I have seen. I will be forgiven for anything about the
"salad" I make in my description of the island's education system,
between the cognitive and the emotional. Anyone who visits this island and
Africa in general knows that any attempt to separate these parts should sound
and look artificial. How do I
not do injustice when I add pictures of toddlers in the kindergarten queue for
toilets and wash hands in running water, while the high school, which has 5,400
students, doesn't even have one toilet?
Kindergartens:
an island of beauty
Felisa
discovered preschool almost randomly. One of the participants in the course is
the preschool's supervisor. Felisa asked her to visit the kindergartens (an
area of particular interest to her), and Berta, the supervisor, happily agreed.
Felica returned from the visit beaming happy: "Kindergartens are an
'island' in this island ...". The only place where foreign and local money
is invested is in early childhood education. International organizations such
as UNESCO, the World Bank and others have joined forces to make kindergartens a
real gem. Hundreds
of children arrive every morning to the complex with several pastel pink
buildings, the children dressed in pink aprons, sitting in clean rooms, and
having a fascinating agenda and educator.
Elementary
school (also has TV)
On the
third day of study, we visit with the participants a primary school in a small
village called Agua e zé, on the occasion of the opening of a new wing - a
donation from a Dutch donor.
Arriving
at the ceremony, held in the school yard, we meet little children dressed in a
light blue school uniform, standing in exemplary order beside a tall, thick
tree. To our surprise, there are many other children who are not wearing a
uniform. It turns out that quite a few children do not attend school, although
there is a compulsory education law until sixth grade (!).
School
students and guests have been waiting a long time for the arrival of the
Minister of Health (since the Minister of Education is not currently on the
island). The man is late (as usual here). The sun is beating down on the heads
of the tender children, and is beginning to trouble them. The children begin to
move uneasily. Teachers release them for a few minutes of disintegration and
drinking. When the minister's car is visible from afar, everyone is again in
exemplary order. The ceremony is all aimed at the presidency table, where the
minister, the Dutch donor and the administrators of the education system sit.
The children sing the long hymn in full (everyone knows the words by heart), and
perform in dance and a short drama. Local television (a boy and a girl are both
the technical man and the interviewer!) Hide the presidency as they tuck in the
speakers' mouths to the huge microphone that sometimes hides the interviewer's
face ... but everything is done in a notable order. We are excited, and faces
of all the audience are serious.
Three times a day, for a week, local
television will broadcast the school's new wing opening ceremony (the same
news!).
Some humor from our participants
Elementary
School: Third shift on the coffee mountain
The next
day, while hiking the fascinating corners of the island, we head to a small
town called Monte Café. It is dusk time. At the top of the mountain is a
building with the sign "elementary school".
There is
almost complete darkness inside the building. The principal says there is a
glitch ... (I think there is no electricity there ...), and proudly leads us to
the classrooms, where children attend a third shift. Soft and sweet kids,
without a uniform, sit in a dark room almost completely, learning Mathematics and
Portuguese.
Exemplary silence prevails in the classrooms, and the
teachers, who surprise us with their class, are happy to come, take pictures of
us willingly, and are proud in what they have to show.
Fourth
grades: The school in the deep jungle
A young principal
who attends our course, and is in the first year of his job, volunteers to host
us at his elementary school with two grades – the fourth and the fifth grades. The new school building is in the deep jungle,
a 15-minute drive from Sao Tome's capital.
We
walk along a narrow path. On either side of the building are barracks, and at
the end of it is a surprise of the school building, whose walls are painted
yellow - striking in its beauty and cleanliness.
A tour in
the classroom teaches us that you can do otherwise ...
The
school has toilets with running water. Children learn French and dance lessons.
The teacher's room has neat classroom diaries, but very few pedagogical
materials to help the teacher. There is no library in the school.
Gentle Guillerme with us
Guillerme,
the principal, argues that one of his difficult problems is the level of
teachers, most of whom lack pedagogical training. But we are impressed that
teachers are motivated and Guillerme's leadership is also undeniable from this
brief visit.
We are
again impressed with the habits of discipline. I go into one of the classrooms
and have a conversation with the kids. Many tell me they walk about an hour and
a half to get to school (!!!).
Everyone
wants to be photographed, and a cute boy, who sees the digital camera in my
hand, where you can see the product of the image before and after, asks me to
take a photos. I tend to heed his request and already prepare the camera to
pass it on, but then all the kids start screaming: "I want too, I want
too" ..... And with great sadness I tell them it's just impossible and
suggest that I take a photo of them and they will all be photographed.
Our participants are still working ...(we
gave them missions in every school we visit)
High
School: Students make a difference
The only
high school in town is very big, and is very close to the hotel. On the second
day of our stay on the island, even before we meet with the students, we decide
to "sneak" into the school and see it from the inside when it is out
of activity.
An
official guard sitting on a chair at the door of the school and with tired look
allows us to step inside without asking unnecessary questions.
It's hard to describe in words what we saw inside:
A
painfully neglected school. Classrooms are equipped with chairs and tables that
are interconnected. Walls are completely exposed. There is no single picture on
any wall.
5400 pupils
are supposed to be accommodating the school, and it seems to us that there is
not one restroom in this institution at all, otherwise how can we explain the
stench coming from the neglected sports hall?
On a
visit we made to this school after about 10 days, the principal (who was one of
our course participants) told us that there are indeed no restrooms, as these
were closed due to student vandalism. To our question - and yet where do the
students meet their needs? The principal answered with a shrug ... of "I
don't know," adding that sometimes, when a student urgently needs the
bathroom, she allows her to enter her private bathroom, which is next to the
principal's room (even there, make no mistake, there is no tap water ... ).
The
secretarial room, whose windows were open, is a large room whose walls are
exposed, on an old iron chest stand the cardboard cases, and on the secretary's
desk is a mechanical typewriter. During our second visit to the school, we
found out that she does serve as the secretary in her day-to-day work.
In the afternoon of the following day, a normal school day, as we
strolled by the school, we discovered the solution the smart students found for
their problems:
If there
is no toilet in the school and there is no running water in their homes, what
makes more sense than removing the school clothes at the end of the school day
and jumping into the ocean for bathing and personal cleaning?
Students,
in droves, jump from a few feet into the sea, paddle in the water, laugh and
laugh, and come home clean and calm. (Good idea, isn't it?)
The high
school principal invited us for an afternoon visit on the last day of study. We
come to the same institution that secretly crept in when it wasn't inhabited by
humans, and now everything seems different to us:
The
classrooms, (whose walls are left exposed), are filled with children dressed in
uniform, all leaning on the tables and busy with a math exam solution.
All 5,400
students are being tested at the same time (!)
We walk
through the rooms whose doors say "Laboratory of Physics"
"Laboratory of ..." The principal regretfully tells us that the labs are
all closed due to budget problems.
As the
bell rings and the children leave the classrooms, the school yard is filled
with the bustle of children and street vendors selling their wares inside
(because the school principal allows them to enter, into an indoor lobby, when
heavy rainfall rains).
This visit is fascinating learning for us.
What does an abandoned school look like from its regular residents and what
goes through your mind when you visit it, versus what it looks like when it's
staffed by humans (mostly children) and how everything just looks different.
Even the lack of toilets doesn't look so bad...
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