I spent the morning in a standard 4 class. The students are between the ages of about 8 through 12. There are different age groups in each class. Some children drop out of school and then return at another time. In addition, if a student does not pass the final exam (teacher-made) they cannot progress to the next standard.
When I walked into the classroom, I was amazed. It was absolutely packed with children. It was in one of the older buildings, so it was smaller than the classrooms yesterday. However, every seat was occupied by at least three students. There were at least 100 students in the classroom. I sat in an adult chair pushed up against the chalkboard and a row of seats.
The teacher was teaching a lesson in Chichewa, the indigenous language. There were only enough books for about one-third of the groups of children. It seemed that most of the children had to just listen to the lesson. When it came time for them to read their section, they passed the booklets to other groups of children.
The teacher had to use an extremely loud voice to get the class’ attention as well as to be heard over the rumble of so many students. I must call her a “master teacher” because I know there is no way that I could ever have done as well as she did with so many! Even under her watchful eye, there were some children fooling around. The teacher took the piece of bamboo that she was using as a pointer for the chalkboard and struck the child. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but it sent a message to the entire class to settle down.
After a short break, English class began with a different teacher. The teacher wrote the entire lesson on the board because there were only 7 textbooks for the class of 100. A story about a grasshopper was written on the board during break. During the lesson the children repeated the story after the teacher read. Then row by row the children read the story. Opportunities were given for individual children to read the story. Since there were so many children, the teacher did not know –or use- the names of the students.
After the reading of the lesson, the teacher erased the board and wrote the next part of the lesson up. It took about 20 minutes for her to get the next part of the lesson up on the board because it contained a chart about dosages of medicine for malaria and a paragraph with missing words that were to be filled in by the students. While the teacher was writing the next section of the lesson on the board, the class was misbehaving. After a while some older children from the back of the room stood up and took some small branches and lightly hit the misbehaving children with them as they walked around the room. I later found out that these were the class leaders. Each class votes on class leaders to help to manage behavior.
When talking to a house-worker about my day at school, she said that democracy has not been all good for Malawi. Before democracy, education was stronger. Every child in school had school books. Interesting comments. This was not the first time I heard this opinion. It is certainly an area to research.
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