Malian Education System

Why the Malian Education System Fails

1. Some students never get to be students. These are the kids who never go to school because their family claims they cannot afford it, because they are needed to work the fields, because their family thinks they are too dumb, and other excuse they come up with. School costs about 1000 CFA ($2) after they buy notebooks, pens, and pay the small fee, though I am not sure how much a monthly fee for school costs though I know it is no more than 200 or so a month. A pack of tea is 100 CFA and many families drink tea every night with 100 CFA worth of sugar.

2. Students are hungry. After two days at site eating Malian food, I experience dizziness and lightheadedness. I require ten hours of sleep each day (most days I require a nap because I cannot stay awake). I don't want to do anything, even if there is work to do because I don't have the energy. Feelings of hunger can be pretty persistent. Fortunately, I have American food that has been sent to me and can afford pasta and sauces to cook for myself, but the kids don't have this. How can kids learn if they are hungry?

3. Students are tired. They bike 5 km to school, go home and return for lunch, and bike home after class (20 km total). They pound millet or corn, care for siblings or their own children, cook, wash clothes, and more whenever they are at home. They stay up far later than I do completing homework, running around the village, braiding hair, watching TV, etc.

4. Students are crammed into the classrooms. In the 9^th grade room, there were 143 students this past year. They have shoved two tables together and 7 sit crammed into these tables, where only 4 should be. They must wiggle and squirm to slowly free an arm here and a leg there, stand on top of the table and walk on top of it until they reach the aisle in order to get in and out of their seat. The tables are 11 deep. The rooms are hot and they are in class six hours a day. The physical discomfort and the lack of individual attention is just no good.

5. Students enter school without speaking Bambara. The new curriculum dictates that children study in Bambara or their mother tongue for the first two years of school. In my village, the average child does not speak Bambara but it is the language they teach in because their mother tongue is only now becoming a written language. The teacher does not speak the minority language they speak. They spend the entire first year learning to speak Bambara in my village.

6. Students are hit by teachers. They are hit with rubber rope if they arrive late, smacked over the head with a book if they fall asleep, backhanded if they answer incorrectly. The school directors do not believe this is right, and this alone endears me to him, which is pretty pathetic.

7. Teachers are poorly educated. The older teachers have impeccable French reading, writing, and speaking skills, but the younger teachers make errors frequently. The English teachers speak very poorly, but they tell me that American English and the British English they teach are different and that is why I do not understand them. I tell them I can go to the UK and have little to no trouble, but they do not believe me.

8. The teaching method is terrible. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The students cannot actually read what is on the board. They have memorized what the teacher has read to them. He/She often reads the sentence four or five times before calling on a student, which is ample time to memorize it. Even then they interrupt the student if they do not “read” fast enough. I have tried pointing this out, but I am ignored. Students in literacy classes do the same thing because it is the way the literacy teachers were taught as children. I do not know how they recognize that students cannot read or how they are able to ignore this fact.

9. 6^th, 9^th, and 12^th grade exams are extremely difficult. To pass on to 7^th grade, you must pass an exam in 6^th grade, to pass on to 10^th you must pass an exam in 9^th grade, and the same goes to earn your high school diploma. This year, my village has the third highest number of students pass the 9^th grade exam for the entire Sikasso region. 17 students passed. Out of 143.Many villages had zero pass. Even if these 17 go on to pass high school (and many will not go to high school and not even half with pass the 12^th grade exam), there are not any jobs for them.

10. All other grades have a pass rate of about 60%. In my village, there are always a large number of students redoubling or taking the class for a second time. After the second or third try, you cannot try again. There are 18 year old students in the 9^th grade class because they started school late or have retaken multiple classes.

11. Corruption exists. Three years ago now, 100% of students passed this same exam. Two years ago, two students passed. You do the math.

12. Materials are outdated or nonexistent. Sometimes the new books are just used books from the city. Students share copies or the teacher simply stands at the front of the room and reads from the one book the school owns as the students copy down what he says verbatim. This often goes on for hour after hour in classrooms. Just copy, copy, copy. The spelling skills of the students is no good because their French skills are very poor making it hard to read over if they try and study.

13. Students do not study. Occasionally I witness them studying, but it is hard because they are so busy. In the evenings, they must study by flashlight or a small fluorescent light, if their family can afford the batteries or lights.

14. Parents do not help children with their homework. My mom would help me for hours in completing my math homework, go to Parent/ Teacher Conferences diligently, or help me study for exams, often reading Spanish word after Spanish word even though didn't speak the language. Parents don't even ask a child what they talked about at school. They often times cannot help them with homework because they are illiterate. Children are not read to at night because the family has no books to read. It is believed that only the teacher can help a child learn to read.

15. There are no enough teachers to fill each classroom. In my village, for the last month of school, there was no 1^st or 2^nd grade teacher. The students ran around screaming for the majority of the day, unless another teacher came in and told them to be quiet. They would stand at the window and yell my name over and over until I waved at them or was minutes out of their line of sight.

I can certainly identify the problems, but what are the positives?

1. More women are studying and they are staying in school longer. My homologue has told me that fewer girls get married at 16 now because they are studying longer. It doesn't quite mean they are not still having babies at 16, but it is a start. It is certainly empowering for these students. My host dad's daughter wears a shirt that says “College Bound” in English; she understands it and gets a big smile if I ask if she wants to go to college. First she has to pass 12^th grade, but I know her dad will let her go to college if she passes (she is currently taking 12^th grade a second time), and that is awesome.

2. The school director reads teaching theory books. It is wonderful and another reason I really like him. He sits outside of the school under his mango tree with his radio and various books concerning teaching methods.

What can I do?

1. I have started literacy classes in my village, which I have written about several times so I won't go over that again. Also, I have helped with training to teach other volunteers to start literacy classes and written up handouts about steps to follow, mistakes to avoid, and so on.
   

2. I have started teaching literacy classes at the mayor's office. Every Wednesday when I am in village and the men at the mayor's office and Nachata are not too busy, we study Bambara and English together. Malians are so good at hearing every sound in a word. When I say a word in English, it is funny to hear them repeat me because they pick up on every sound and any bits and pieces I pronounce with an accent. They are able to tell me how to spell words in Bambara because they can identify the sounds of letters so easily. I prefer to only teach them Bambara because it is practical, but they requested studying English as well so we are spending half of our time studying both languages. It will help them write speeches at future ceremonies and parties and I think it helps them understand why it is difficult for me to learn Bambara as quickly as they would like.

3. I have painted world maps. I painted a map of Mali in the 6^th grade class with each region painted a different color and I painted a world map in the 9^th grade classroom. The geography teacher uses the world map he tells me and the 6^th grade students have told me they really like the map in their room.

4. I have done hygiene lessons and introduced hand washing stations at the school. I did the F-chart presentation, which I talked about a post or two ago. I just turned in the SPA (Small Project Assistance) forms from a project I just completed. I had 11 hand washing stations made. The first cycle already had three so I gave them three more so that they could place one station in each classroom. I gave the second cycle six stations because there are six classrooms, and I gave one to the doctor's office and another to the mayor's office. The stations at the school are important because the teacher can remind the students to wash their hands every time they return from the latrine; hopefully it is a habit they will start taking home with them. People at the doctor's office can use it to teach people about hand washing, and the men at the mayor's office have started lecturing anyone who visits and does not wash their hands after using the latrine.

5. I just completed Take Your Daughters to Work Day. We just finished this project two days ago. On Sunday, 12 girls and four chaperons from four different villages in the Sikasso region came into the city of Sikasso. They slept at the high school where one of the volunteers works. We spent the day visiting different working women in the city and talking about the importance of education. We visited the cesref, which is an extension of the hospital; the girls got to see a large hospital here and listen to a female boss talk about her education and how difficult it was for her to get to the position she was in as a woman. We also visited a woman who runs a volunteer program that is very similar to Peace Corps but is composed of Malian volunteers. She was amazing and talked to the girls for nearly two hours. We visited women who worked at the artisan's market and they talked about their training for their work, their marriages, and their plans for when they completed their training program. At the high school, one of our language instructors came and talked about her education and work with Peace Corps and then four high school students talked to us about life in Sikasso and their goals after high school. When we weren't visiting powerful, highly educated women, we did ice breakers, talked about Malian and American culture, played games, colored, put together puzzles for the first time, played basketball for the first time ever, walked through the huge Sikasso market for the first time, and more. We were able to take the girls to two different restaurants in the city and bought them chicken sandwiches one night and hamburgers another. My favorite part was seeing them smile as they experienced things for the first time and watching them come out of their shell. Almost everything we did was a first for them, and I think the girls really got a lot out of it. They came to understand the importance of education and saw first hand where there lives could go if they worked hard enough and if their families agreed to allow them to continue their education. I don't know that it will ultimately change the direction of their lives because their fathers and husbands make the majority of the decisions that make up the girls' lives, but it allowed them to see a different world. When I get back to village, the chaperon and the three girls will give a presentation at the school to talk to other students about everything they learned. I am excited to hear what they have to say and to see how it effects their confidence. Most of the girls were too shy to say their name the first day but by the end of it they were running around smiling and laughing and talking.

6. I will start a life skills course. I have already talked to the school director about starting a life skills course. Each week we will discuss a different topic, such as positive communication skills, conflict/resolution, HIV/AIDS education, and more. Once I return to site, the director has promised to sit down with me and one of the English teachers to plan the program. I already have a book with the Bambara translations, which will help, and the English teacher is there to help in case students have questions I cannot understand or cannot explain. I am looking forward to working with the students again.

Slowly I am seeing the benefits of my work. This week in Sikasso I was able to use my Bambara skills to speak with people in the city and the girls who came to our program. In village I rarely talk because people are so reticent to speak Bambara. It was nice to see a pay off for all of my hard work in learning the language. I am seeing the benefits of literacy classes when I teach the women new life skills or watch them learn a new letter or put together two sounds all on their own. As I said, the men at the mayor's office have really taken to lecturing people about washing their hands and explaining their benefits. The impact I am able to have in Mali under the circumstances I am in are not at all what I expected, but I am seeing benefits and that is what matters right now.