Math in Malawi
I have been asked by a new reader who Chuen-Yen is. She's a friend of mine who recently graduated from our medical center's residency training program, and worked with me as a resident seeing outpatients. This year she is doing a year of volunteer work as a staff physician in a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary hospital in Malawi, Africa. Her weekly emails are a delight.
In this week's email, Chuen-Yen describes a typical day of elementary school in Malawi. It's dramatically different from the educational system here, as you will see:
Moni -- Here's this week's memoir:
Each day the Mpange Pre-School students place their tuition fees in a pile. The fagot is lit to warm the outdoor classroom and heat the group�s porridge allocation. As the morning chill dissipates, children enjoy their nourishment. Then learning activities commence.
First pupils sing about bountiful harvests, ancestors or family ties. Some run tantivy about grass mats, which represent schoolhouse boundaries, enacting the verses. The village storyteller usually adds a brief anecdote. Everyone enjoys these word-of-mouth lessons.
Students subsequently proceed to counting. There are no pens, paper or chalkboards. Rather, discarded bottle caps are tallied. Caps are also strung together in rounded bamboo shavings to form musical instruments. Math thus becomes quite melodious.
After arithmetic, students either play with urban offal or imitate adult activities in the �pretend area.� The pretend area has one clay pot. So, the children relish pretending that they have real toys.
Class is dismissed after pretend time. Older siblings, many of whom head families orphaned by AIDS, walk the preschoolers back home. En route, they have fun cutting down the next day�s fees.
Given the inadequacy of this simple learning experience, several NGO�s are diligently training African teachers to emulate their Western counterparts. Instead of singing about heritage, students will read history books. Mathematics will be done with pencil and paper rather than bottle caps. And the pretend area will be refashioned with contemporary paraphernalia. It is hoped that the next generation will thus realize the importance of leaving their villages to pursue success.
posted by Dr. Alice at #
