A month into the school year in Mali, I have decided to
devout a post to education in Mali and its importance in general to development.
I came to Mali, a water and sanitation volunteer, and my undergrad was in Civil
Engineering. In the five sectors in PC Mali (education, environment, health,
small enterprise development and water and sanitation) there was always a
friendly competition of which was the “best” sector or most needed. Of course volunteers
in each sector think that they are more important to development than the
others, but as you go through your service you realize the importance of each sector
to development. One sector that I realized the importance of that I have taken
for granted in my own life is Education.
IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION TO DEVELOPMENT
At first I thought, well how can you study if you don’t have
clean water to drink or you are sick since you lack proper sanitation and don’t
wash your hands with soap? This is true but how can you maintain a pump when
you have had no education on how to repair it? Even if you are taught how to
repair a pump, it is a lot different teaching people who are illiterate and cannot
write down all the parts of the pump and, thus, have to memorize all the parts
and their function. It is also difficult for the water and sanitation committee
to manage the funds collected to maintain the pump with limited people who can
write who paid money and how much money they have in the bank. The list of
examples goes on, but in the end, work in water and sanitation or any sector
for that matter would be a whole lot easier if more people were educated, even
just being able to read and write.
I have really come to cherish something so simple as being
able to read and write, something I have really taken for granted, as a given
really since most everyone in the U.S. knows how to read and write. But here in
rural Mali, those people are few and cherished. They are often overwhelmed with
having to write for all the committees that NGOs have formed in the village. When
I am writing on flip chart paper at meetings women marvel that I can write in
Bambara, a language I just learned these past several years and that they have been
speaking their whole lives. Even those that can write always are surprised by
how “fast” I can write. Even school children read and write painstakingly slow.
It is because even though they study in school afterwards they don’t practice;
few do their homework, libraries are few and far between not to mention
computers and the internet. Some of my best memories are going with my Nana to
the bookstore and choosing from the thousands of books. I can’t imagine a
childhood without reading though that is a privilege of few in the world.
EDUCATION IN MALI
Now that I have elaborated on how Mali has taught me the
importance of education in development, I’ll move to the education system in
Mali. Honestly, sometimes when I think about all the things that need to be
done to improve the education system in Mali, I find it hopeless. Even if your
village is lucky to have a school with some teachers, those teachers are
probably under qualified (can’t even speak the national language, French, that
they are supposed to be teaching in) or have a low work ethic. With rare
monitoring of teachers, some will spend a whole day drinking tea under a mango
tree or go off to Bamako while their students sit in class waiting for them to
write something on the chalk board for them to copy down. This is ofcourse not
to say that there are not good teachers in Mali, but from my experiences they
are the exception to the rule.
The teachers aside, and I don’t think I can even go into the
government, but parents who often have not studied themselves can’t help their
kids with their homework and often do not ensure that their kids are doing
their homework or getting good grades. Before I mostly found fault in the
parents, government, and teachers but there are problems with the students
themselves though much of it would be helped if some if not all those three
were working correctly. This year, two kids in the families I have become close
to (Fatomata and Wuye), both in primary school, decided, themselves, to stop
going to school. Their parents tried to force them to go to school by dropping
them off but they would return home or hide. I even tried to talk to the young
girl, Fatomata, who would have to repeat fifth grade. I told her she would
regret not going to school later in life, but she would not even talk to me. I
have heard many similar stories in village this year. Many parents are
discouraged that they buy school supplies and pay fees but their kids to not take
education seriously and do not know anything. I tell them to have patience and
to monitor their children’s progress in school but often with so many in the
household and not being educated themselves, this is difficult.
The secondary school, in a village over 4 miles away, is a
whole other matter. The parents must purchase expensive bikes for their kids to
bike to and from school often twice in the day to come home for lunch and go
back. I bike there myself once a week to go to market and it is a hilly ride
and extremely hot during the hot season from March-June. Those that don’t bike
back, often go hungry since their parents don’t have money to give them to buy
lunch and food here is difficult to pack “boxed” lunch. They can rarely afford
bread, let alone peanut butter and jelly.
With the school being so far away and not being an enclosed
compound, it is very easy for students to skip school. Attendance records are
not well kept by teachers and even if they are, there is no phone call home of
“why hasn’t your child come to school for the past week?” and the parents see
them leave and come back everyday so they assume there are going to class.
In all this I have not touched on girls education. My host
father in the neighboring village said that boys study more than girls and
perform better in school. He is trying to send his daughters to school but they
are not performing well so why should he not just keep them at home instead? He
said all the girls that are sent to secondary school in Torodo end up pregnant.
This year I felt I have failed my younger host sister who
also shares my name, Mariam. She also was part of the first girls camp that our
area volunteers organized in a larger city. Mariam is about 15 or 16. I’ve seen
her grow from a skinny, little girl into a young woman that all the boys in
village flirt with and this may be the reason her father has decided to marry
her off this year before she gets herself pregnant. When I asked why Mariam
wasn’t going to school anymore, her father said she had failed out of 7th
grade for the second time and they would not let her repeat a third time. I felt
I could have done something, maybe made sure she did her homework or ask about
her grades but I was “too busy” and how could I help her now if she had not
studied well in the past six grades? Now it is certainly too late. And even out
of the ten girls that went to the two girls camps, I only know of four who are
still in school. Next time I organize a girls camp, I must make sure that those
girls progress in education are monitored well after the camp is over.
My host brother Issa also stopped going to school last year,
he was in third grade and couldn’t even write his name. My other host brother,
Moussa, who is 7 years my junior was in ninth grade and could not do addition
when you had to carry the one. He thought that America and the U.K. were the
same. He has since failed out of ninth grade and is looking for work in Bamako.
I helped teach an English club to ninth graders who had been studying English
for two years and didn’t even know how to say “Good Morning” and “how are you?”
The Millennium development goals are mostly concerned with insuring universal primary education (a goal which they are falling short of) and
increasing girls enrollment. I have learned it isn’t just
enough to enroll kids in school but we must ensure the quality of the education
they are getting. Yes, they going to class but how are they
performing? Can they read, write, and count? My work partners daughter is in
fifth grade and can’t count to 40 in french.
I don’t mean to paint
such a bleak picture. Mali certainly has to start somewhere and I know the
education system will improve but there is not one magical solution and it will take time which does not help many of
the children I have come to know in Zeala.
