Fighting for Education in Gran Slee, March 19

April 19, 2010

We spent the afternoon with Ashlee’s English class, which she conducts once a week for whichever children choose to come. We asked the children about things they learn in school, including Dutch and math, and they told us what they want to be when they grow up: mainly teachers for the girls, boat men for the boys. One child, a young boy of about 7, impressed both of us particularly thoughtful and intelligent. He told us that he would like to use the internet to “to learn about other countries” and quickly learned how to use the Flip camera to conduct an interview of another child.

Therefore, we weren’t completely surprised later that night to learn that he was the child of the teacher we had decided to interview. We were invited into the family home, a small room for the boy, his mother, and a brand new baby. The son’s intelligence obviously came from his mother’s passion for education. She told us how when she was young, her mom didn’t want her to go to school. In spite of this, she used to go sit down in the fourth grade with the other kids her age. Since she didn’t know enough to be there, her teacher taught her after school until she finally caught up, and this “finally opened her mother’s eyes.”

Now, she holds informal literacy lessons for adults under a tree in the community. She attends the trainings provided by the Ministry of Education whenever she is in the city.

She told us that just like when she was young, many kids in the village today don’t go to school because their mothers don’t understand that school is important. For example, we asked about one kid (notably for wearing a yellow hat at all times) we met who had never gone to school. In turns out that she had offered to send him for free and he still didn’t come. This is the same with several kids in the neighborhood.

Education requires school buildings, books, and pencils, but it also takes the desire to learn and motivated, passionate teachers.