I want to spend a moment singing the praises of "boronmuso", or big sister, Maria Diarra. But in order to appreciate her talents, drive and commitment to radical transformation, you have to understand a bit of the context, especially around education in Mali, and especially around girls education.First of all, imagine a school without books or handouts at all. Imagine 100+ kids squished onto benches, each with a small piece of chalk and a tiny board. Now, imagine that your home language is Bambara, that you hear Bambara all day long, that everyone you know speaks Bambara all-day-long, and that when you show up in first grade, the teacher says: "Bonjour les enfants!" And now, as you begin to learn to read and write in this foreign language, your day at school consists of either memorizing or copying and memorizing the lesson that the teacher has written on th
e board. Rote memorization is what learning consists of in most Malian schools. And what makes it even worse, is that the content is still largely based in the colonial French framework, with very few references to life as kids know it and live it in Mali.Now, add to that the fact that as a girl, you are expected to support your mothers (plural) with much of the cooking, cleaning and organizing of the home. Also, there are probably some home businesses that you need to be involved with --making shi butter from the nuts that are collected from the countryside; collecting and selling wood; making and selling herbal remedies. Clearly for your family, the time that you spend at school is seen as a loss to the family. Since the boys don't have these expectations of house work, it's not such a problem to have them spending time at school. But girls are just too valuable NOT to have at home. So, by the end of primary school, many girls have already dropped out of school.
Now if that's not bad enough, in the 1990's, the World Bank started a campaign called "Structural Adjustment," whose goal was to help third world governments and economies look more like the west. A key part of the strategy was to privatize state-owned businesses, and to reduce the budon of public sector employees. This meant privatizing education. Mali is a great example of this strategy in action, or in inaction. As a result, the government encouraged individuals to open private schools, with absolutely no money coming from the state. School fees are paid by the families, and from these fees, the school must pay its teachers, and purchase all that is necessary to run a school. Today, of the 12,000 schools in Mali, 6,000 are private.
My friend Baba runs one of these private schools. It is called "Ecole Sirido Baba," and it is located in a poor neighborhood of Bamako called Dianguinebougou. Unlike state schools, you don't need a teaching degree to teach in a private school. In Baba's school, Baba is the only person who has finished Lycee --the academic pathway to high school equivalency in Malian education. All the other teachers have a technical certificate of some sort, or part of a Lycee education. Also, they receive almost no training from the government, and so, they teach what they were taught, in the style that they were taught it. That means: the teacher writes lessons on the board, and the students copy it down, and memorize it. That's school.
l'Institute pour l'Education Populaire (IEP)
Maria started her own school, called "Chi Wara," which is the mythological symbol of excellence in Bambara culture. Now, she has an organization called IEP, and they have set out to transform Malian education; to end the process of "stupidification", as she calls it, which has been the result of public education in the post-colonial period. Maria's focus is to help schooling be relevant to the life and culture of the people of Mali, and to help the pedagogy be engaging and stimulating for the kids --to help them to be curious, to build on what they know, and to make sense of the world around them.
As we would visit classrooms in public schools, I was amazed at how Maria would step right into her transformative role. As if on cue, the teacher would immediately scare the children into statue-like obedience. Hands folded across the chest, faces expressionless --as if this was the posture of learning. More realistically, this is the posture of obedience, which is important when you have almost 100 kids in your class! From the beginning, Maria would start to get the kids engaged, slowly encouraging them to unfold their arms. She would ask them if they had any questions for us visitors. She would ask them what they wanted to be when they grow up? She would ask them if they had a song they would like to share. Slowly, the kids would come alive, as their knowledge and culture would for a moment be welcomed in the classroom. Unfortunately, these were French classrooms, and so the kids' Bambara knowledge and culture wasn't made to feel very welcome; as if their culture and traditions didn't have much value.
That is the work of IEP. Breaking the cycle of "stupidification." Helping Malian children build on their rich culture and values, and truly learn to make sense of the 21st century world they live in. Here are some images from our day visiting Baba's school, "Ecole Sirido Baba," and the public school up the road in Dianguinebougou.
Madu's Speech
I found that once in front of a group of kids, I would inevitably find myself trying to debunk the myth of the USA and the WEST being where its at! So many young Malians dream of going to the States, or to France, to "make it." I would tell them how much I have learned from them, from their culture and traditions. I would tell them how special their culture is, and how rich with humanity and respect and dignity it is. I would tell them that the "hadamadenya" (humanness) and "bonya" (respect) that exists in Malian society is worth more than gold. I would tell them that the sense of community and belonging that one feels in Mali is more valuable for their future than any sum in a bank account.
I would tell them all this in Bambara. Did they hear me? Not sure. Despite my language abilities, my white skin and American passport are pretty powerful.
Blog ya later.
Madu./.
