Schooldays – here and there
It’s only now that I’m finally back at school here in Scotland (term started yesterday) that I am starting to make sense of my experiences in Malawi, and noticing some of the contrasts and similarities.
In Malawi, school was supposed to start at 7.30a.m., although for lots of reasons this didn’t quite happen on most days. Before school, it was the duty of the pupils to sweep out their classrooms. The day always started with assembly, and that usually involved some physical exercises to warm them up – although I found it hot, for them it was quite chilly being the middle of their winter, and in the last week even I found the wind cold in the mornings. There were also prayers (muslim one week, christian the next in this mixed-faith community), notices, words of encouragement, and finally the national anthem. Then the children went to their classes.
Maths, Chichewa and English were usually the first lessons of the day, although the timetable, and any possibility of adherence to it, remained a complete mystery to me throughout my visit. Other subjects included Social Studies, Science, Creative Arts, PE, Agriculture and RE. Lessons for the youngest children, In Standards 1 and 2, ended at about 11 a.m., for Standards 3 and 4 at about 12 noon, and for Standards 5 to 8 at about 1 p.m. However, the Standard 8 pupils, who have their leaving exams in September, returned to class in the afternoons from 2 to 4 p.m. for extra revision lessons. The dedication of these pupils and their teachers was remarkable.
On some days, all lessons seemed to stop about 11 a.m. for whole school activities. The first week I was there, this was mainly for sports practice, as they had football and netball matches against other schools in the zone at the end of that week. On another occasion, it was for “activities” which seemed to include things like choir practice. Sometimes it was for “manual work” – helping to keep the school maintained and repaired: groups of pupils were delegated to tasks such as mopping the classroom floors, helping the school management committee repair the borehole, and re-building the boys latrines (sadly mostly washed away last rainy season).
On Fridays, the patterned changed again: as many of the pupils were muslim, school ended at 10.30 a.m. in order to allow pupils time to prepare for mosque at 12 noon. However, once again Standard 8 pupils were back in their classroom for revision in the afternoon.
Mercifully, here in Gairloch, we don’t start so early, although it probably wouldn’t be a problem if we also went to bed as early (more of that another time). And we have the comfort of a predictable timetable: I found the variable start times in Malawi and the apparent lack of correlation between the timetable and what actually took place in classrooms quite frustrating. Part of this was undoubtedly my developed world obsession with time and timekeeping and part was my consciousness of the short period I had in the school there to try to make a difference. Now I have come home, the relaxed attitude to time seems attractive….
Today we had an assembly in our school, though we don’t have one every day, or even every week. In both schools, notices and encouraging words form part of this. However, I would be truly amazed if we started singing the national anthem on a daily basis. Of course, we have a dedicated team of cleaners who attend to the school each evening, so our pupils don’t have to sweep out their classrooms, and we have our janitor (and others) who deal with repairs, so “manual work” doesn’t feature for our pupils either. But most of the subjects studied in both countries are the same or have parallels and, whilst the range of classroom equipment is obviously more limited in Malawi, many of the ways of teaching are similar or are becoming so. I was really impressed with the teaching skills of some of my Malawian colleagues – I could learn lots from them – and their ingenuity in using what was available to enliven their lessons.
