Year Two. Begin!

Its the start of Year Two for my service. How do I feel about it? I'm a little ambivalent about knowing that everything is over half over: I will miss the people here, but I'm also a little frustrated with 'the system' as a whole (educationally speaking). It came to me after reading about an experience Richard Feinman had in Brazil. The education isn't teaching real, tangible things in subjects like Math and Science. It teaches how to change numbers in base ten (our number system) to base two (binary): what on earth is the point? How many school kids will be honestly asked, in real life, to physically change numbers into different number systems? Also, the word problems are completely extraneous as well – Tell people how to say such and such a number in a different language you will never hear. For ICT, I have to teach about some information processing cycle and how it pertains to a computer, when most children have no idea how to even use a mouse to point and click. Is this Information Cycle what we want to pass on in our tests? Its as if someone in the education service decided "Our kids need to learn computers". "We should test them on if they know computers or not". "Let's make a test to test knowledge, but it has to be on paper". Then there is a feedback loop where tests are based on textbooks and textbooks are based on the tests. It ends up that the mundane and worthless information is what is memorized (In what year was email invented? Name one advantage of the Internet. What does CPU stand for?) as opposed to more relevant topics (Typing, Navigating a computer desktop). Its like those who are in charge set questions, but what real world is knowledge is transferred? Only how to memorize and regurgitate facts, and not critical thinking (in very short supply!). People get degrees in education, but that only enables them to move to a higher institution to teach and earn more, all the while practicing the same techniques of information transfer – memorization! If someone has an abundance of knowledge in irrelevant information, and teaches it to a younger disciple, what can you say the disciple is educated in? Perhaps 'learning the system'.

On a different stream of consciousness way of thinking, I decided to do P90X to get into shape. Not that I was in bad shape, but when villagers comment "Kofi, you are looking large!" or "Obolo Kofi", its time for a change. My fellow teacher just called me "extra large". So, every morning for 90 days (almost, except for saturdays which is a rest day) I get up at 5:30 and exercise for an hour. As I am only about 2 and a half weeks in, I can't comment on the effectiveness yet in the weight trimming area, but I can see an upper body difference. Also since I've been here for a year, people are used to seeing me. Consequently, and nearly every night I walk around my town, I get invited to people's houses for drinks and sometimes food. Not that I don't like the local moonshine to drink, but last night there was an exceptionally strong (70%?) drink that I had. Even the locals made faces at it: that's how you know its good.

Vacation!

So I took about a month of to travel to Kenya, around Ghana, and chill in Accra to take a break from site, and to see family. I'm still composing a complete correspondence of the months travels, so I'll wait on that. But, school will be starting next Tuesday; also no other teachers are in my town. I showed up at my town and people asked "Kofi, where have you been? And why are you here? School doesn't start for another week!". At least I'm getting back in the groove of village living. Vacation was good though... the food alone probably added about 10 pounds to my frame. So to counterbalance that, its time to exercise!