Where am I? Oh yes, that's right, I'm in Mozambique. I'm trying to give a quiz to my 12th graders, who happen to behave like 4th graders on speed, and they will not shut up. One starts to tell a proverb to me, in direct violation of my orders to be silent - so I tell him to leave immediately.
He doesn't.
I tell him to leave again and again...nothing. So I threaten him with an unjustifiable absence (a big deal) if he doesn't leave. He doesn't. I ask him his name. He won't say. I ask the chefe what his name is. The chefe gives me a wrong name. I give the chefe an unjustifiable absence. I ask again his name, this time threatening to not give the ACS (quiz). He says nothing. I leave. The students cheer and wail. Zeroes all around.
I help a student with their mathematics homework. They're asked to convert the base of a logarithm, but don't know that any number divided by itself is "1". In chemistry class, I offer them practice questions for the exams. The chemistry is not all that hard and they get it easily. The math, however, in spite of my best efforts to simplify it, is difficult for them. Like four squared. Is it eight? or sixteen? According to dozens of 12th graders who are doing this math every day, it's eight.
I discuss with Nanosh my problems with the 8th grade Biology students. They, for the most past, memorize (or try to) everything. We imagined what it would be like if we, in America, were taught in schools in another language unrelated to our own (Chinese, for example) concepts that would be difficult to understand in our own language, by people who barely understand them. Would we be doing any better than these students? How would our Chinese be? How about our chemistry? And math?
I think this society - built around what rich countries do now that they're rich, not built around how people get rich - only breeds people who know how to exploit the system and its inherent flaws. Such as a basis in intrinsic meaning. There's an educational system - but it's there to produce certificates and more teachers. No inherent value of education. And can that happen inductively?
There are churches, but they are around to make pastors rich and people happier. What about spirituality? That happens anywhere BUT in church.
Richard Feynman, in his book, explains how there is a group of Pacific Islanders who were invaded by Allied troops and their island used as a way station. The war ended and troops left, and so did all of the food they were receiving from the airplanes that would land. So the islanders built a runway, constructed a tower, and even made reed headphones for the man who sat in the tower, just like the Allied forces had. And they prayed - no, expected food to come.
They saw the world around them suddenly and (MOM can't read the next word) all of it without knowing what it was and why it was there.
I walk back home with bread and tomatoes today, passing construction projects. I think, what separates me and a licensed teacher? Is it just a piece of paper?
I've seen that there are plenty of people in this world who act like they know so much, but they just know facts and act upon those facts. They call themselves experts, but they're idiot savants. And then there are people who live and experience and try and fail and sometimes succeed. These people are not experts. But I'd much rather a doctor of the second type operated on me than the first. Because a doctor of the second type knows that mistakes are human and instead of being deathly afraid of making any mistakes, and acting only within the boundaries of his knowledge, he puts himself on the line and knows his limits. The first doesn't see limits - the first tries to shape reality into his perceptions and the second shapes his perceptions into the reality - he looks to constantly alter how he perceives the world, to be a more accurate representation of it. The first thinks he already knows the world and no change is necessary.
I feel like 95% of the teachers and students here are that first doctor.
Peace
John
