When you were eleven years old, did you do your math with a pen? I didn’t. I recall my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, reprimanding another student for doing her math homework with a pen (it was, naturally, a mess).
Our volunteer Natalie recently helped Joel, 11, with his math. Joel struggles with math. She worked hard to help simplify concepts and make his math less intimidating. She did this, of course, using pencils. Joel completed a homework assignment with pencil, all correct, all neat, all ready to be turned in to his teacher the next day. Natalie had done an excellent job as a Green Eyes volunteer.
This scenario should represent an upbeat, happy little success story for our charity. But it is not. Let’s look a little deeper into the sorts of things we face as volunteers in Cameroon.
First: something simple. To me, the following statement is fact, not opinion:
When learning to do math, children are best served by using pencils, not pens, in order to be able to erase mistakes, which are numerous and frequent.
Joel turned in his assignment. His teacher rejected his (entirely correct) work on the grounds that it was not in pen. In Joel’s class, children are required to do their math work entirely in ink.
All of Natalie’s efforts went down the drain, and a disappointed and confused Joel came home with a failing grade.
Education systems are different all around the world. I’ve many international friends from Germany, France, England, Asia, Africa and other places. The French scoff at the American system that is “so easy,” as do Germans. The Cameroonian education system is based on the French system, which, to me, is nothing more than teacher-feeds-I-spit-back-out.
I won’t go into the lack of independent thinking, creativity, or intellectual freedom within the Cameroonian educational system. I feel a need to write about the absolute basics that are entirely absent as well as ludicrous practices that would baffle anyone with a sense of what it means to effectively learn something.
All of the children under the care of Green Eyes in Africa attend private schools. Public Schools are not an option because we are not child abusers. The public schools in Cameroon regularly beat children’s backs and hands with sticks, leave them dangerously unsupervised, and, due to overcrowding, leave room for rampant student-on-student abuse. These things all occur in private schools as well, but to a lesser degree.
Classrooms in our children’s private schools are filthy. The walls are brown and appear to never have been washed. The “administrative offices” are full of uncategorized, waist-high piles of papers. The only offices that are attractive (and essentially inaccessible to everyone) are the director’s offices.
Because we pay for our children to attend private schools, we expect certain standards to be met. Unfortunately, our children have been physically abused at times. Cyril (then 7) came home from school one day with dark purple horizontal lines down his back from being beaten. Raissa (then 12) came home with trembling hands from being beaten with a stick and referred to as a whore. We of course immediately took action in these instances and have since successfully prevented more physical abuse.
But other challenges seem to be out of our control. When Joel brought home a recent English final exam (from an “English Speaking School”), our volunteers Joe and Natalie looked over the questions.
Below, I’ve copied what was on this exam. Keeping in mind that this is a private school (expensive for Cameroon), do we have the right to be dissatisfied with this? We’re asking ourselves what we can do about this, if anything.
I’ve placed our observations in bold. As I begin to copy this, I struggle because the quality of the photocopy they used for the exam is so bad it’s hardly readable.
____________________________________________________________________________________
FIRST SEQUENCE EVALUATION
SECTION A: GRAMMAR
Answer all questions by crossing out the one in the answer column. (Confusing… “the one”)
I got to school late _____________the headmaster beat me. (A) Because, (B) So, (C) So until, (D) When.
This example demonstrates that being physically beaten in Cameroonian schools is the norm. Also, why are all options capitalized if they’re meant to be placed mid-sentence? Why the commas?
READING COMPREHENSION
One hot day a large, fierce snake was, coiled under a tree. It was it’s favorite time of the evening. When it did nothing at all except dream of all the rats and toads it was going to catch for food. however, this particular evening a praying mantis which was not very careful as to it’s direction tripled over the snakes tail.
(u.n.b.e.l.i.e.v.a.b.l.e…Can we not expect a basic understanding of it’s vs. its? Capital letters at the beginning of sentences?)
The snakes was disturbed and unfolded itself with a hiss and grounded the little creature the snake regretted it’s immediate action because the insect was not fit for it’s meal. The energy used in crushing the little praying mantis was equal to that for a far rat good his appetite and health. (Inexcusable)
Not far away from the scene was a fat rat. The snake had test it’s energy to go for a good hunt as it used it at all on the little praying mantis. (“snake had test it’s energy to go”??)
This Story Show that we must be careful as to how we react to situation.
…10. Why did the snake regret it’s immediate action by catching the praying mantis?
How is a child to make any sense of this or learn anything if the teachers themselves don’t even proofread their own exams? If this were public school, I would expect this, as Cameroon’s government has no standards whatsoever concerning anything to do with their citizens. But these people claim to operate one of the BEST schools in the city. Where is their pride? Where is their commitment to educating their students?
My immediate reaction to this absurdity is to go to the school and talk to the directors. But I could never do this because, 1. I’m an American and in the past once teachers found out that their student lived with a “white man” they were harassed, and 2. Even bringing up a complaint in the school would result in discrimination against our child.
So what do we do? We make up for this farcical school system by supplementing the children’s education through Green Eyes in Africa. At least they learn some basic things at school, but any creative activities, reading, writing, or other enriching experiences are up to us.
I’m grateful our kids have Green Eyes in Africa. But it’s truly scary to me to think of the millions of children out there in this country with a school like this as the “best” their country has to offer.
W.O.W. I just found out that this is not even the school’s fault. This exam came from the Cameroonian government. This is the mandatory exam for Joel’s age group---distributed all over Cameroon. Wow.
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