One of the more challenging experiences of being in a country like Sierra Leone is to see the hopefulness of children as they head off to school each day. Hope looks like long lines in of children dressed in their recently laundered and pressed maroon and grey, pink and blue, yellow and green, walking off to school on the dusty roads of Kabala or of one of the thousands of villages that dot the map of this country and many other besides. Hope looks like new black shoes and a new backpack, a sharp pencil and new pen. Hope looks like a student bent over her notebook copying what the teacher has written on the board. Hope looks like a test result, a report card with passing marks. Hope sounds like the quiet request for assistance in paying school fees so that the child can at least attend school.
Sadly, for the majority of children in this country and others as well, because of the many complex reasons that the state of education is so poor, these hopes will not be realized. Even in the better schools the obstacles are enormous. If you ask children what they hope to do when they are finished school, many respond with ‘doctor, nurse, president, development worker, IT specialist’ and so on. The first challenge is getting through Primary school, which is a mountain to climb, especially for girls, who often are not given these opportunities, then Junior and Senior Secondary School, which is often not available to students in rural areas, and if they do have access, qualified teachers are not likely to be there, let alone the necessary learning materials.
On the global development indexes it is still education that remains the greatest change factor. So how does one go forward in hope? For me it comes in the smallest of increments and it will only happen when teachers shed the mantle of colonialism and make education something real and suited to the context in which the children are living.
What do I mean by this? I and many others have observed that in a post-colonial context it is quite natural that the system of education would imitate what had been there previously. As a result you get something that looks like education, it has the shape of education, more than actually being real learning. What got lost along the way is the ‘why’ of education. Probably the biggest learning for me on this challenge has come from Dr. Jo Kuyvenhoven of Calvin College who has and is working with teachers in this country to connect literacy with the real lives of children through materials that come from the child’s experience of food, transportation, clothing, local folk tales and family situations, etc., familiar to the child who is learning to read and write.
We experienced similar in South Africa. I was attempting to teach the English Literature syllabus that required grade 11 students to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. It was impossible for children in rural South Africa to understand the Roaring Twenties in the US and it had little purpose and value other than to pass an exam. Only more recently have they introduced the work of Chinua Achebe and other African writers. It is encouraging to be in the new library at CRC Primary and Secondary in SL and see that many of the children’s book are stories in which students can ‘find themselves.’
More than that, we move forward in real hope that a Christian education might even further connect children to their true humanity within their own African context; to see begin to see themselves as beloved human beings, created in the image of loving God who calls forth from them a vibrant and imaginative life in the middle of the real life challenges that this little country faces.
And here is where we are privileged to work together. This can truly be a partnership of walking, living and growing together. I have learned so much here. My life is immensely richer from the experiences, the relationships and the development that we are doing together.