Hard Times

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else"
How Mr Gradgrind would have loved Uganda! By pure chance – it was the only copy of Dickens I could find at Heathrow – I am reading 'Hard Times', having decided to bring with me some rather more challenging reading matter than my usual diet of Booker shortlisted novels; and the opening words might surely have been written by the Minister of Education himself…

Uganda has an impressive National Curriculum, published only last year: detailed, rigorous and forward-looking, it includes provision for creative subjects, for gifted and talented pupils, for PE and sport, and for group teaching. However, it is an idealistic and unrealistic pie-in-the sky document and impossible to implement: class sizes are far too big, there are many too few teachers and there is no money for resources. I have been told that there is not a single qualified PE teacher in the entire country: sport, as a non-academic subject, is seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded in a qualifications-obsessed society. What is taught in schools, therefore, is facts, facts and more facts, with no room for the 'imagining' that Mr Gradgrind so hated, nor for dialogue, for investigation, for creative expression or for independent learning.

Observing trainee teachers for the last three weeks has been a largely dispiriting experience. The lessons are formulaic, repetitive and dull. In each one, whatever the subject, a handful of facts is taught through drill, chanting and imitation: this is called "the experiencing phase" of the lesson. The children are then given a written exercise which they copy from the board, "the evaluating stage". Those who finish sit and wait for the rest of the class to catch up, sometimes spending as long as half an hour doing nothing. Today I watch a student taking a science lesson with P1 (five and six year olds) on 'dangerous animals' which runs along the lines of: "Here are three dangerous animals: snake, elephant, lion. Repeat after me, snakes, elephants and lions are dangerous animals. These words say snake, elephant, lion. Everyone read them. Snake, elephant, lion. Now stand up and repeat them when I point to you " (this takes about twenty minutes to get through the entire class). "Now complete this exercise in your books: write the names of three dangerous animals." There is only one resource in the room and that is the teacher; the teacher's only resource is the official textbook. The textbook is dull, dry and stereotyped; ipso facto, so is the lesson. But believe me, every child can name three dangerous animals when it comes to the mid-term test and that is all that matters…! This pattern is repeated throughout the age range: facts are taught, repeated, chanted; then copied from the board, memorized and regurgitated in tests. The children work in silence and the teacher marks their books as they finish. There is no opportunity to help children who are struggling: this is a sink-or-swim environment and the less able just have to look after themselves - or copy from their neighbours. It is an approach straight out of the Victorian era.

Teachers do a two-year training here, for which they only need the equivalent of GCSEs, leading to a teaching certificate. After this they can go on to do a diploma and then a degree if they so choose. Many work towards these further qualifications at the weekends or in the holidays – they are the only means of getting a promotion and earning more than the very basic salary that they start on. Finding some students to observe, however, has not been plain-sailing by any means. On Friday morning I make the long, hot walk to Kanungu with the college lecturer I am working with only to find that the school we are visiting has decided, unilaterally, to have a day's holiday. "We have sent the children home to refresh their minds" the Head tells us, a trifle defiantly. When we return to the school this week many of the children have been sent home again, this time because their parents have not paid their fees. They are given half a term's grace after which their children aren't allowed back until they have paid what is to us a pathetically small sum of money – a few pounds, no more –but to a peasant farmer often an impossible amount to find. However, today I strike lucky in a little school in the next village where five students are taking turns to teach a Reception Class (Nursery 2) of eighty children. The children are seated on a dozen or more benches which, when the time comes for written work, become their tables: they simply kneel on the stone floor behind them. These four and five-year olds are incredibly well-behaved and go through their chanting and drilling diligently. When it comes to their written exercise, however, the sheer practicalities of making sure each of the eighty children has a pencil and a book, can see the board and has a space to work in is a logistical nightmare for the teacher. Monitoring their progress, likewise, is impossible: the more able manage the task, finish and get a tick. The rest of the class struggle along, some doing nothing, others managing a few indecipherable scribbles. And so it goes on, lesson after lesson, and school after school. The impressively good behaviour of the Ugandan children, while it does have something to do with the way they are raised, also has a lot to do with the stick that the students carry in their hands: corporal punishment is still used widely here.

A few days later I am booked to go to two tiny schools high up in the hills in a village called Kajugangama. The lecturer I am working with and I go first to Kanungu for fuel. Two goats have draped themselves round the petrol pump: an informal way of telling us that there is no fuel today. After a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiating our driver reports that he can get a jerry-can of fuel for twice the usual price (and that is high enough..). All eyes turn – hopefully – to me. The car is refuelled and off we go.
The road we take winds up through the hills rapidly becoming more rocky and rough until it finally reduces to a single track made almost impassable by the recent heavy rains. The first school is reasonably accessible but to reach the second we have to abandon the car and walk down a narrow path through banana fields for about a kilometre. I begin to wonder how a school could possibly have been built so far from a road, but when I see it I understand – it is a tiny two-room building made entirely from mud. This is a 'parent school' built for and by the families who live in this isolated spot but woefully underfunded as few of them can afford to pay any fees. The two classes, one for the younger children and one for the Reception/Year 1 age group, have a wall between them that reaches only to door height so noise carries from one room to the other unimpeded. I watch a student on her first teaching practice taking the Nursery class – a loose term for pupils in their first year of schooling ranging in age from two to five – which has sixty pupils crammed into the small room. I don't know whether to feel more sorry for her, as she shouts to be heard above the hearty chanting from the class next door, or for the two and three-year olds on the front benches who, along with the rest of the class, are being subjected to a lesson on subtraction. They sit for an hour, these tiny tots, struggling with 9 take away 5 and suchlike, work far too difficult for any of the class but especially for them. Bundles of sticks for counting are given out as they start their written work, once more using the benches as tables, and in such a cramped space I wait with bated breath for someone to be poked in the eye. But no, the only casualties are the sticks, which several children have started to chew, probably not having had any breakfast. There are clear signs of malnutrition here – swollen abdomens and scalp lesions – and the people are obviously very poor indeed. "How did you feel the lesson went?" I ask the student at the end of it and, depressingly, she says she thought it went really well...

It has taken me some little while to make sense of the complicated schools system here. There is a large number of schools, one round every corner, it seems – but then there is a very large number of children to educate. (People here, even my teaching colleagues, are astounded to hear that in the UK it is usual to only have two or three children as eight or more is quite common in rural Uganda.) First there are the government schools: no-one has a good word to say about these as they are very understaffed so classes are enormous, often with over a hundred pupils. Teachers are, it is said, demoralized by the intolerable burden this presents; rumour has it that in many schools they arrive late, take it in turns to have days off and do not set written work because the marking is impossible to deal with. Children do poorly; they receive no food during the day so arrive hungry, work hungry and leave hungry if they cannot provide for themselves. The secondary system too is buckling under the strain of also trying to provide places for all the children who need them and it has just been announced that all secondary schools must now operate a double-shift system with children coming for half a day only. This system is widely disparaged: children get half the lesson time, teachers get double the work load, resources and facilities are put under huge strain. In the government's defence, however, it must be remembered that this is a country where 87% of the population live in rural areas, most of them subsistence farmers who do not pay tax. There is little revenue, therefore, to fund public services such as education and health.

Not surprisingly, parents who can possibly afford to do so send their children to private schools, often called 'Parent Schools' since the parents finance them through very modest fees; and these are everywhere. Some are church or religious schools – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim – and others not. They bear absolutely no relation to our concept of a private school: they operate on a shoestring and facilities are very basic but at least have the advantage of controlling their own destiny. Standards are generally higher in these schools, classes smaller and children are usually fed at break and midday. Kirima Primary is one such a school. In both government and private schools uniforms are compulsory, and in most schools parents must provide stationery too. Boarding facilities are provided at most schools because children have to travel such long distances to get there; but again, these are nothing like the boarding schools in the UK. The children sleep in three-tier bunks in overcrowded dormitories, do their own washing and a variety of other jobs around the school, like the cleaning, and do schoolwork before and after school and at weekends to keep themselves occupied. Boarding is a popular option: the children get extra schooling and because fees are minimal it is often almost cheaper for parents than having to feed and care for them at home. Far from feeling upset by the amount of schoolwork the children do – prep sessions for the older pupils start as early as 5.00 am in some schools that have electricity and 6.30am at most (and staff have to supervise them!) – parents see this as an opportunity: education is the only way out of poverty for their children. In a society such as this childhood as we know it does not exist and children have to be much more robust emotionally. I have hardly heard a single child cry since I have been here, although they have much to cry about. They are far, far less needy and demanding in terms of the attention they expect from adults than children in the developed world. Life is tough and they do not expect it to be otherwise: self-pity is not part of their emotional language. The youngest boarder at Kirima Primary is five and several are only six; the only concession to their young age is that they are allowed to sleep in the bottom bunks, and be in the same dormitory as an older sibling if they have one.

In both the government and the private schools resources are in shockingly short supply. Classrooms are bare and dingy with only scrappy home-made wall charts of letters and numbers if anything at all. Textbooks, where they are found, are shared between many children. There are no art materials nor any science equipment, certainly up to the end of year 7 – not a magnifying glass nor a magnet in sight. Talking to a physics teacher who works at the local government secondary school, he says "In Uganda we do everything in theory - so it's no wonder that we produce engineers who can't put things into practice!"
All the schools I have been into use stones, sticks and bottle tops as counters in maths lessons. In most schools children have to bring their own pencils and many carry a razor blade to sharpen them. My heart is in my mouth as I watch tiny children slicing away at their pencils with the sharp blades then slipping these back casually into their pockets. How would risk assessments go down here, I find myself wondering…?…

Yet, despite this depressing catalogue of shortcomings, the children do somehow learn to read, write, count - and speak English too. They work extremely hard and, in the absence of any other distractions from the hardship of their lives, actually seem to quite enjoy their lessons. And they sing: every lesson I have seen up to Year 5 has begun and ended with a song, often with one or two in the middle as well if the class is getting restless. To hear them sing is an absolute delight: they have clear, loud voices and everyone, but everyone, takes part enthusiastically. It seems to be a kind of therapy for them, uplifting, soothing, cheering, unifying – and raises them, these rows of impoverished, overburdened children, into what I can only describe as a state of joyful liberation. It is not hard to see where the gospel music of the oppressed American slaves had its roots…

So where does a volunteer from England fit into all of this? How, coming from a school and a culture so educationally privileged and progressive, can a teacher like me contribute anything of use and value to a situation which, in reality, needs a massive injection of both money and political will to change it by even one iota? Certainly not by any aspiration to 'do good' : the very term 'volunteer' hints at both an assumed superiority in the giver and a perceived deficiency in the recipient and I have quickly realised that tact, sensitivity and humility are the most essential qualities I can bring to my new workplace. A school like Kirima Primary , despite its material needs, is a very successful and happy one when judged within its own context. As with any successful school, it is the strength and commitment of the staff team that makes it what it is. They work incredibly hard, sometimes a seven-day week if they are on duty at the weekend. All I can offer is support and friendship to the teachers, giving them a few extra free periods each week to cope with the massive workload and – genuinely – to express my admiration for what they achieve in the school. Much as I might prefer a more child-centred approach to the teaching there I know that my methods would be useless with such large classes and with so few resources. For the children I am a new and friendly face and a different kind of teacher who can help them with their English, teach them something about a different culture and bring a little variety into their predictable curriculum. The older students at the High School and College, now they are getting used to me, love to ask questions, often rather naïve ones, about life in the UK – or 'your place', as they call it. Is it true that if you have more than four children they will be killed? Does childbirth hurt as much as it does here? Do English people get AIDS? Do they eat matoke and grow bananas? Is it really true that there is no 'bride price' paid when people get married? And can it be possible that all the roads in your place are made of tarmac…?

The important thing I can do, apart from building stronger links between Highgate School and the CHIFCOD schools, is to raise awareness in the UK of the challenges people face here and hope that CHIFCOD may as a result get more financial support for the tremendously worthwhile projects – far beyond just schools, as their website shows – that they operate out here. If a few more children get sponsors, if some textbooks and storybooks can be purchased, if even one child less gets malaria through acquiring a net, then I shall feel something positive has come out of my time here. People attribute very generous motives to me for coming here but I know that I shall take back from the experience far more ( my weight aside!)than I have put in, and that my reasons for coming are just as much selfish as altruistic, if not more so…

Today, Saturday, I have taken myself for a long walk through the banana plantations towards the next village. Small houses nestle amongst the dense foliage of the trees and I stop at one of these to chat to a woman called Patience and her four young boys. She is keen to show (and sell me) mats and bags she makes from dry banana tree leaves so I step into her little house. On the bedraggled sponge-foam sofa is a fifth child who lies there with grotesquely contracted limbs drawn up towards his body and head lolling. "His brain does not work" his mother tells me matter-of-factly as she tries to disperse the flies that persistently settle around his mouth and nose. He is about four and obviously severely brain-damaged. He cannot walk, feed himself or indeed move at all. I ask Patience if there is a school, maybe a boarding school, where he could be looked after. "In Uganda? Of course not!" she says. I ask how she will manage when he is older and bigger and she simply shrugs her shoulders. There is a small handful of special schools in the country for children with physical handicaps such as blindness; otherwise, to all intents and purposes, special needs do not exist here and children who cannot cope with mainstream schooling simple stay at home to be cared for by the family. I ask what the boy's name is and, innocent of the dreadful irony of her reply she says "He is called Ambitious".

Hard times indeed for this little family, and for many others like them….


Footnote: You can help CHIFCOD move up the Google website ratings and therefore be more in the public eye by accessing this blog through their website:
www.volunteeruganda.org
rather than directly. The blog is easy to find on the front page and it shouldn't take any longer than doing it the usual way. Every little helps!