The Primary School Blues

My last post was about a public school in a relatively wealthy village; last weekend I had lunch with three friends working for CIDA in poorer villages in Iringa district, and they gave me an even bleaker picture of public education here.

Primary schools are the most neglected because they are free for all Tanzanians; consequently, families don’t feel that they are losing anything by keeping their children home to work on the shamba. This is of course true of many migrant and farm-working families in the US and all over the world; when the harvest needs to be brought in, all available hands must help. Indeed, our summer vacation is a holdover from a time when a majority of Americans lived on farms.

However, students aren’t the only ones who skip school to work on the shamba – teachers do it, too. On any given day several teachers may not show up for work because they have decided to stay home and do the weeding. If none of the teachers show up (and this happens all too often) the students just sit idly on the dirt floor of the classroom or run around in the schoolyard. But they do stay close the school in hopes that their teacher will show up.

At one primary school Anette visited with FORS, teachers sleep on the classroom floor at night because they don’t have money for a hut. The day she showed up school was closed because it was payday for teachers in Iringa town, but as soon as the car came within sight of the school dozens of children came running up to the car, waving their reused notebooks in the hopes that they would have school after all.

Again, cultural relativism is necessary in thinking about this situation: primary schools average 100 – 120 students per class and teachers are barely paid enough to stay alive. So if you were faced with the choice of going to work to teach 120 students with no books and no blackboard, or weeding and watering your shamba to make sure you’ll have enough food to survive the hungry season, what would you do?

Tanzania’s current primary enrollment is between 80-90%, but the secondary enrollment is a mere 25% (http://www.tanzaniaembassy-us.org/government/). Of these 25% most are boys; because of traditional gender roles, girls are expected to the bulk of the work at home. Some families want to send all their kids to school, but simply cannot afford it and thus prioritize the boys.

The good news is that those who do study at the secondary level benefit from smaller (70) classes, more resources and more teachers. Most teenagers in Iringa town go to secondary school, and many of our friends here are studying at one of Iringa’s five universities. Two college students in Dar started a website called JamiiForums, a free speech free-for-all whose discussion board debates about corruption led to the recent firing of many top government officials.

Contrast this with the fact that after independence most African countries had so few highly educated citizens that important jobs in business and government were often filled by people with a primary school education. Zambia had about 1,000 high school graduates in 1961 – imagine running a country with that talent pool. Uganda’s Idi Amin completed 7 years of education and later joined the army – a deadly combination.

With the Kenyan political crisis now diffused, thanks in large part to two highly educated Africans - Kofi Annan and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete - East Africa can continue the vital work of addressing the challenges, like high quality education for all, that all societies struggle with.