Day 5: Teacher vs. System

(Davis teaching his grade 8 history class on the Eastern and Central Africa trade routes)

“Good morning Beautiful Ones, did you rest well last night?”

Wamonhi Davis, Maranyundo’s only history teacher, opens his class with this greeting before he begins delivering content to his students today. He is a masterful storyteller, weaving descriptive, humorous, and passionate examples and anecdotes into his lecture on the Eastern and Central African trade routes of the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite lecturing for nearly 80 minutes straight, a majority of his students seem alert and involved in his sharing for the whole class period. Watching Davis teach reminds me that culturally relevant and engaging instruction doesn’t always have to be student centered.

At the same time, as I observe Davis’s class, I wonder about how the young women seated at the desks in front of me are processing and making sense of this sweeping historical period. A few ask thoughtful and critical questions, but most don’t speak at all. There are many moments when I wish I could hear their perspectives. For example, toward the end of the lesson after mentioning the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the establishment of Liberia and Sierra as a result of abolition, Davis off handedly asks the students if the descendants of enslaved Afrikans “should come back here [to Afrika] or stay where they are [in the Americas].” Some girls answer informally, but there is no intentional space set aside for them to voice their ideas to each other. As one of those descendants, I am dying to hear their thinking on this question! I could imagine a lively debate or socratic seminar, where these bright young women talk with each other about the impact of the slave trade across Afrika and their relationship to people of Afrikan descent living outside of the continent. However, from my observations, group work and class discussion are not a regular part of most instruction at Maranyundo.

Davis has taught for 17 years and graciously allows me to meet with him after observing his class. He is interested in getting away from the traditional model of teacher-centered methods of instruction, and asks me for student-centered teaching strategies that would allow for more active student participation. At the same time he also feels incredible pressure to cover all the content that could be tested on the national exams, which are the sole measure of achievement for Rwandan students and determine their future educational opportunities.

Rwanda has just rolled out a new competency based national curriculum that identifies social and moral development as just as much a priority as academic knowledge. But Davis and I both agreed that there is an inherent contradiction between the student centered pedagogy outlined in this new curriculum and the high stakes standardized testing that privileges memorization and regurgitation of endless amounts of academic content. Though the context is different for me in the U.S., Davis’s dilemma is one that deeply resonates with me as an educator; how do we facilitate learning environments that support young people to actively question the world, while also preparing them to navigate the status quo which requires conformity? Is it possible to do both? Sometimes I think it is, and sometimes I don’t…

Later in the day Kamiya, Ja’Hari and I sit in on a Christian leadership class focused on the meaning of excellence. The instructor, Justine, is a charismatic woman who is also the District Secretary of Youth Leadership. She engages the young women seated in front of her about the difference between excellence and victory. She talks about adopting a “win-win” mentality that involves striving for one’s personal best while also concerning oneself with the well-being and success of others. “It’s good to share life experience with a friend…who I am today, it’s because people invested in me.” she says. She contrasts this way of seeing the world with school grading systems and sports that are based in competition with winners and losers. The girls seem to listen eagerly and actively participate.

In both classrooms today I saw loving relationships between young people and adults. Within a stereotypically “oppressive” traditional form of instruction where the teacher is the bearer of knowledge, I observed a deep sense of mutual respect and a commitment from the teachers to instill values that go against the stream of our capitalist system. Davis spoke of the conditions of house girls in middle and upper class homes as comparable to slavery, while Justine challenged the young women to question the scarcity/win-lose mentality that is the guiding philosophy of most economic and social relationships within the competitive institutions that dominate many societies.

I don’t want to romanticize the students and teachers that make up Maranyundo, but I have been touched and inspired by the social fabric here. I know that in the U.S. the economic, social, and educational systems are set up to churn out competitive, self-centered, individualistic people, but the relationships cultivated at Maranyundo—and in many, many other classrooms around the world—go against this massive current. They young women here are growing into leaders that are not invested in “power-over” relationships, but rather in collective visioning, mutual support and solidarity…

Hope can feel like a cliché term, especially because it has been co-opted by so many politicians, but spending time with Kamiya and Ja’Hari, and observing the Maranyundo students, makes me feel very hopeful about the future of humanity, despite the chaos and devastation that surrounds us….