Education in Tanzania

There has been wailing and gnashing of teeth in the teachers' lounge during the past week.  The results of the Form IV national exams came out, and over 80% of our school's Form IV students had failing marks.  Overall national results were not much better:  60% of the 400,000 public and private school students who took the exam failed.  These scores are much worse than in previous years, although there has been a noticeable decline during that time.  The questions now being raised in the political and education sectors are predictable: why is this happening, and what can we do about it.

I have only been in this country 9 months, so I probably do not totally understand the intricacies of the situation, but the following is my opinion of some of the causes.

Government policy has focused on a bricks-and mortar approach to getting students in school.  Many secondary schools have been built in rural areas.  Staffing those schools with trained teachers has of necessity lagged behind.  Filling those schools with students actually prepared for secondary school has lagged further.  I don't have first-hand knowledge of the primary schools, but I see their results.  Quite a few students lack basic skills. 

There is little immediate, lasting penalty to students for failure.  In the States we call it "social promotion".  Here, they don't call it anything, they just pass students on.  A student who gets all "F"s on the annual report card is still be promoted to the next grade.  This seems nuts to me. I teach math, which is a subject that builds on what is previously learned.  A student who receives an "F" in math cannot possibly grasp more complicated topics in the subject.  

There are periodic national exams which, in some cases, determine if a student can proceed to the next educational level.  There is one such exam at the end of primary school with 250 total points.  Our school accepts students who score above 70 points on the test.  There is another national exam at the end of Form II.  Starting just last year, failure on this exam means that the student must repeat the form.  A second failure and he or she must leave secondary school.  Options after that include vocational training or going back to the farm, literally.    

Rote learning is taught; critical thinking is not, at least at lower educational levels.  My students are very good at copying every single word I put on the board into their exercise books (they have to do so, as they have no textbooks), but 10 minutes later some of them cannot solve simple problems using the guidelines I have just written.  And, given a word problem, many cannot even decide how to approach it.  This, I have concluded, is more than a language difficulty.

There are lesser issues:  Burnt-out and indifferent teachers (although most in our school are conscientious), no books for students, a culture that does not value reading, students assigned to work duty (chopping wood or cleaning the campus) during class hours.  These have bothered me a great deal from time to time, but I think those I previously discussed are the root causes of the problem.

Can Peace Corps teachers make an impact?  Certainly not in a national sense.  What I hope to do is make a difference for at least a handful of individuals.  The people of Tanzania must do the rest.   

Hair

Most of the people of Tanzania are black Africans.  (No surprise, there.)  People whose ancestors are from India live in the larger cities and people of Arab descent live along the coast and the former trade routes, but in our area almost everyone is a black Tanzanian.  The result is that the local barbers and hairdressers have no experience cutting Caucasian hair, and are loathe to try, for fear of botching the job.

Mark was able to find an Indian barber in a large city who gives him a good, if short, haircut.  I had the same man cut my hair, to my regret.  He said he knows how to layer hair, but he does not, and he cut waaay too much off.  (I am so nearsighted that when I take my glasses off for hair styling, I don't know the result until it's too late.)  I am resigned to letting my hair just grow long for the next year and a half.

Almost all of the Tanzanian men that we have seen wear their hair very short, even shaved.  (I find it interesting that the "Afro" look that was popular in the States in the '60s and '70s isn't worn here in East Africa.)  Public school students, girls as well as boys, are also required to have their hair sheared very short.  This is a rule that is very practical--with a dusty environment and water in short supply, shaved hair is easier to keep clean.  A side consequence is that when the youngest students are seated at their desks, all in uniforms and with identical haircuts, I sometimes can't tell the girls from the boys without peeking to see if they are wearing skirts or trousers.  Of course, the Muslim girls are allowed to wear scarves if they so choose, and that helps with identification.

Tanzanian women also tend to have short hair, although there is a great deal of variation.  Traditional Maasai women shave their heads, and so do some others.  Many other women presumably cut their hair very short, but it's hard to be sure because their heads are wrapped in headscarves in public.  The most variation is found among middle-class women--those with enough disposable income to spend on style.  Some of the teachers at our school wear their hair short, but others let it grow longer and pull it back into a knot or ponytail.  Some have their hair permed or straightened.  Still others favor cornrows, hair extensions, and (gasp!) wigs.  The last two options only slowly came to my consciousness.  Early on in our homestay family I watched my "sister" braiding a little girl's hair--or so I thought.  She was actually weaving in braided hair extensions.  I also watched a neighbor here go from narrow to fat cornrows and then to straightened hair before realizing she was wearing a succession of wigs. 

Okay, so I'm dim.  But people's experience and expectations color their perceptions.  Just a couple of days ago I was walking with a group of my female students when one of them asked, "Madam, is that your hair or a wig?"  I said, "My hair, of course."  She then stepped forward and lifted my bangs to see if they were really attached to my scalp.  "It is your hair!" she exclaimed.