It's hard to describe how chaotic, disorganized, nutty, frenetic, and illogical things are here; and how poor the level of learning is. I'm teaching 9-13 year olds and some students are still doing single digit arithmetic on their fingers - and only one or two have legible handwriting. There are a couple of wonderfully bright ones, but they will fail the national exams next year because the rest of the class is so backwards that the lessons will never catch up with the curriculum. The latter is completely out of whack with reality - they teach ridiculous subjects (Roman numerals, dividing fractions) but the kids don't know how to read, write, or add.
The teachers do the best they can, but many haven't been paid in months, sometimes years, and it would be hard for anyone to stay motivated that way. Some only survive by giving private lessons. The teaching method involves the teacher writing on the board and students copying. I have not seen a single instance of actual teaching as we know it - there is no learning, just memorization. This means that they will only get a question correct in the exam if it is exactly the same as the examples given in class. I have NEVER heard a student ask a question.
They have no problem solving skills. For instance, students can add 12 plus 13 if it is presented vertically, but not if written horizontally as 12 + 13 = ? Solving word problem such as, 'if John has three eggs and Sam has six eggs, how many eggs are there in total?' is difficult for the majority, and 'if Sally has 12 eggs and gives 3 to Mary, how many does she have left over?' is impossible.
The students have no text books or reading materials, and only have pen and paper because of the presents the Honored Guests left. More of their effort goes into precariously balancing on the rickety brown benches they sit on, of which most have at least one, and sometimes two, legs missing. Even Miss Jones' chair collapsed and left her sprawled on the floor the other day. Not even the teacher has a text book for Math or English. The national syllabus, for what it's worth, doesn't seem to be in any particular order. For instance, we did writing paragraphs a month before a lesson on punctuation is scheduled to take place.
There is also so much time wasting - flogging can take an hour, prayers and singing happen twice a day, and we start half an hour late every day while we wait for the head teacher to show up and dole out chalk to the pitiful masses (myself included). There are no resources for photocopying, so everything must be written on the board and transcribed by the kids, which takes hours every day because they write so slowly. The blackboard itself is white from overuse, so whatever is written up there is barely legible.
In short, the whole thing is a mess. It's hard to have any hope for improvement.
