War on Illiteracy Part 2

"History will absolve me"

-Fidel Castro

Me: Uli ndi zaka zingati ndipo uli standard chani? (How old are you and what grade are you?)

Him: Ndili ndi zaka 14 ndipo ndili mu standard 5. (I am aged 14 and I am in grade 5)

Me: Umatha kuwerenga? (Can you read?)

Him: Chichewa ndimatha koma Chingerezi ndimayesela. (I can read Chichewa but I struggle with English)

            Take yourself several years back. Try to recall how you learned how to read and write while attending congested and underfunded public primary schools. If you are a Malawian, you are aware that learning how to read and write was a multilevel struggle. If Chichewa was not your mother tongue, the battle to acquire literacy skills started with learning how to understand and speak Chichewa. Having grasped a good oral command of Chichewa, you knew that your journey to literacy had more miles ahead of it. You had to learn how to read and write Chichewa and then transition to English. Learning to write and read was a struggle that demanded patience, commitment and determination.

             I would like you to reflect on the roles that your folks at home and your teacher in class played on your quest to acquire literacy skills. If you went to public primary schools you will admit that you learned how to read and write from home and not at school. It is the intervention of your parents, siblings, and guardians that enabled you to acquire the ability to read and write - mostly by the time you were 9 years old and in grade 4. For some of you, your folks had to do it themselves while for others they enrolled you in part time classes. Fine.

Malavi Full Primary School

            Now try to think of what would have become of you had your folks not cared or lacked the ability to read and write. Imagine that your parents were illiterate and therefore evaded discussing or participating in your academic growth. Imagine that your only chance to become literate rested on paying attention in a crammed class, with a 80:1 student to teacher ratio. What would have become of you?

            Such is the scenario that faces most children in Likoswe village. Here, most adults are illiterate and therefore incapable of providing supplementary academic assistance to their children. Even for literate parents, most of them hardly take an active role in assisting their children with academic pursuits. To them, it is the responsibility of teachers at the nearby Malavi Primary School to inculcate their children with academics. 

However, at Malavi Primary School, the conditions are no better than the general conditions in most Malawian rural public schools. In most classes, especially in formative grades such as grade 1-5 (before the majority of students drop out for various reasons), a single teacher is pitied against a large number of students, which makes it impossible to give proper attention to specific academic problems that individual students face. As a result, children here progress slowly with their academics. With children struggling to learn how to read and write, repetition rate is high, which builds frustration and thereby contributes to high dropout rates in rural schools. 

In rural public schools, it is not uncommon to find a 14 year old in grades 4-6. For most of us, we turned 14 in Form 1.

Busy at work: One of the students working on his homework

            With assistance from Lloyd Bamusi, a youthful Likoswe village resident, I have introduced a program that seeks to help struggling students in Likoswe village to attain literacy and numerical skills. Participants in this program meet every afternoon during week days for one on one assistance and sort of part time classes. In essence, we thought this is our way of contributing to and augmenting, albeit informally, the ongoing National Reading Program, which seeks to improve learning achievement of students in primary schools. When we started in October, we hoped that some residents would join us in helping these students but given that we do this free of charge, the people that we expected to join shunned us. No giving back to thy community. 

Anyway, Lloyd and I are undeterred by this. Currently, 37 students have registered in this program and even though attendance fluctuates on a daily basis, the outcome so far seems promising. In addition to fluctuating attendance, other problems that we have been encountering are lack of material resources, lack of a conducive learning environment, and lack of support from community leaders and parents. But when you face these kinds of problems, flexibility and improvisation help you keep going. Maybe things will improve as time goes by. Maybe one day one kid will testify that our effort improved her writing and reading skills. That's what matters.

Meanwhile, Lloyd and I will keep on marching. One day, history will absolve us!