Zooming In: Intro to Education

This post is the first in our “Zooming In” series, which focuses on the environment we are entering and the population we intend to serve and learn from in Zambia. We will focus specifically on our skills and philosophy and how those relate to particular needs on the ground. Finally, as a disclaimer, we have not worked in or visited Fimpulu before, so we are primarily reflecting on our own study and past experiences in the larger village Mwansabombwe. That said, even though every community and village is different, there are some similar trends and challenges that we will almost certainly encounter.

David here, signing on for the first time to our family blog!

This first post is dedicated to the rural Zambian educational environment and our planned place within it. Our direct contact with the public education system came with the 9^th grade class at Kazembe Basic School in 2012. Meg taught science and I taught math and civics to a total of about 120 kids, 30ish at a time. We spent most of this time in a formal classroom setting, but also spent some hours tutoring small groups as they prepared for their year-end exams. The whole experience was both enlightening and incredibly rewarding, and we were so grateful for the opportunity to help and learn.

The most striking education problem the rural population faces is access. Most villages have one or more primary schools (lower and sometimes middle school years), but secondary schools are more rare. Those seeking secondary education often have to either travel great distances or board with family or friends in another village entirely just to be close enough to attend. This problem on the individual level is exacerbated by a lack of teachers/funding that causes class sizes to be large and largely non-participatory. During our last visit, we worked with some very dedicated and capable faculty and staff who were, nevertheless, only able to do so much in an overburdened system. As a result, the students are chronically underprepared to meet the national standards that allow them to move on to the next grade level. 

A small group study session leading up to finals.

We saw this first-hand while preparing students for their standardized tests. While reviewing a practice-test with her science students, Meg found that it was full of questions based on experiments that the kids “should” have completed that year in class but could not due to lack of resources. The questions were worded in a way that made them impossible to reason through—for instance, a question about an experiment to demonstrate photosynthesis could not be answered based on one’s knowledge about photosynthesis, but only by knowing whether a specific chemical agent aids or inhibits photosynthesis. We never did figure out the answer to some of the questions, even with all of Google at our disposal.

Meg explaining something science-y that I don't know anything about.

Another major problem related to access is the inability to pay for or effectively engage with what educational resources are provided. Besides the basic materials like pens/pencils and paper, students also must have school uniforms or else be excluded from class. Costs increase during secondary school, when students must begin paying tuition. Even those in school must struggle to engage with educational materials. For example, textbooks are rationed and distributed to schools, making them a rare commodity to which students don’t have direct access. Instead, we saw that teachers had to spend part of their class time simply dictating from their copy. When Meg and I were given textbooks in our respective subjects to work out of, the kids caught on quickly and often copied down paragraphs out of our books during tutoring sessions.

Trig is not for the faint of heart. Neither is chalk.

The costs are only made more difficult by the fact that, for families in rural areas, maintaining one of their children as a student means losing a hand around the house. On multiple occasions we saw kids pulled out of classes because the family needed them elsewhere (farming, caring for a sick sibling, etc.). These factors combine to make the investment of education high risk while it results in little tangible reward, perpetuating cycles of hopelessness and poverty.

We are grateful that, in Fimpulu, Choshen Farm creates a positive and targeted impact through their programs, which include providing a head start to kids through a (rapidly-growing) preschool program, enabling access to education by sponsoring secondary and college students who work for their tuition during breaks, and increasing access to informal resources through their Learning Resource Center and library. As our “Fimpulu” page explains further, I will serve both in formal classroom settings and informal tutoring and mentorship programs. Though it is a systemic problem, lack of education in rural areas can be alleviated on the ground in part through these holistic approaches that not only address the problem of access but also make that education worthwhile both for students and their families.