A Clash of Cultures—What to Compare?

Chisuma School near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Last week you were immersed in studying the educational system of a country somewhere in the world. I've started reading/viewing/listening to your reports and enjoy learning about these very different views of education. Sometimes we forget the our system in the U.S. is not the one that everyone uses.

On our recent trip to Africa we visited the Chisuma School, a small, rural school just outside Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is a tourist area with visitors from around the globe there to see one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

We arrived in the afternoon to find 75 of the school's elementary students outside waiting to greet us. Various grade level groups welcomed us with poems, songs, and performances. All of the students  walk to school, some several miles each way. Parents pay $10/term for each student and even at that modest cost, many students need help with the tuition.

This elementary school has a special and very dedicated group of high school students who live too far from the local high school to attend that school...so they attend this school closer to their homes. In one room at least 55 students were crowded together in a hot, stuffy room with few textbooks available. The teacher wrote the lessons on the chalkboard. But still, these students are committed to their studies and realize that education is their pathway to a better life.

Education in Zimbabwe has suffered terribly as has the entire country during the economic crisis of the last 15 years. Once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, with one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, the country now has an 80% unemployment rate.

While in 1980 an average of six dollars was allocated per pupil, in 2009 this amount had dropped to $.70 per pupil. As a result, the pupil-textbook ratio in urban schools has dropped to one textbook for every 10 pupils while in rural schools there is only one textbook available for every 40 pupils. The deterioration of the education system and the political tensions in the country have also caused an exodus of teachers.

The Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA)  estimates that in the past decade more than 45,000 teachers have left the country. A recent estimate indicated that 35% of the teacher posts in primary education and 33% in secondary education were vacant. 

We have so much and they have so little.