Education

November 14, 2017

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."--Nelson Mandela

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog, some of this discussion will be a refresher from some of the previous blogs. But since I am picking up new readers who are interested in the Tumaini Primary School in Kiruani that Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc. is working with. First Tumaini means Hope in Kiswahili. For many in Tanzania, there is hope in the prospect of having their children receive a quality education. Unfortunately, as I have discussed over the years a quality education is still difficult to find in Tanzania. That is why I have become so excited working with this ministry because they are working to provide just that.

The problems many people used to face in Tanzania was cost. Only about 5 years ago did the government make primary school education free and only in the last 2 years has a secondary school education been free. When they say free it really only relates to school fees for enrollment and attending. It does not cover uniforms, school materials, testing fees. The government did crack down on teacher contributions or basically the requirement from teachers that the students bring them food or "gifts."

I have talked at times about the problems many of my Peace Corp Volunteer friends faced in secondary schools of the other teachers not teaching. Often not participating in their assigned classes. The fact students still had to do work for the teachers/headmasters in the form of gathering water or tending their crops.

Another huge problem with the education system is that for grades standard 1 through 7 (basically elementary and middle school in the USA), the government schools teach in Kiswahili. Then when they advance to secondary school or what we consider to be high school they are taught in "English". I put it in quotation marks because many of the teachers who are supposed to be teaching in English and were supposedly good enough at English to pass college cannot actually speak English. So as they copy items from an English textbook to the blackboard they often make mistakes. Then the students who are just now learning English copy it to their notebooks make additional mistakes. That is why a passing grade is often just 30% correct answers.

Tumaini will be different because it is what is called an English Medium school. The primary school teachers will use English to help prepare students for secondary school and to provide them the building blocks of their education in the same language the advanced schools will use.

One of the things they will need to do to achieve this goal and to provide a quality education is to recruit teachers who care, teachers who can truly teach, teachers who are actually teachers. Most of those teachers will be in high demand so the market will be competitive. The first step they are taking is by providing them with housing that is above the grade for their position. The houses will have running water which is only normal in bigger cities and even then rare in most homes. We are planning to add electricity (evaluating three different methods to do this) so they will have something that is normally only in the bigger cities and again still not so common in the home.

It is exciting to be a part of an education ministry which plans to surpass the minimum standards. I am excited by the opportunities this will give me going forward. We can use the educational cartoons made here in Tanzania, I can hopefully participate some with their science or math classes to provide practical exercises (my beloved science experiments).

Last post I mentioned they got their certification as a primary school. We have 3 school classroom buildings on site with offices. We have the headmaster house almost complete. The expansion of the toilet facilities is almost complete. They have a bored well with a generator powered pump and elevated tanks to provide running water on site. They also have a kitchen area being built with food storage. Here are some pictures of the site: