One of the biggest things that I struggle with in my schools – and I’m far from being alone in this – is corporal punishment. Not so much the struggle to get teachers to stop doing it (though obviously I do) but the struggle within myself to process my own feelings and knee-jerk reactions to it.
In theory I’m not completely against the occasional slap on the wrist or other physical correction of a child. Sometimes you just want to give a kid an immediate physical reminder that what they did probably shouldn’t be repeated. Of course there are other and better ways to get your point across, and I don’t think that myself I could ever hit a child in any way but I’m just saying…probably there will be no lasting psychological scars from the calm occasional or once in a great while spanking. (Can you see already how many qualifiers I’ve worked in? How uncomfortable this makes me?)
That said, the first time I witnessed a teacher hitting students in her class it was probably one of the more horrible things I’ve ever had to sit and watch. Those children were terrified of every movement she made, and I personally was on the point of tears. First grade for goodness sake! How can you expect kids to learn to love reading if their first experience with it is like something out of Full Metal Jacket? But that’s not really the point (for now). I’ve seen other teachers hit, slap, humiliate, and pinch their learners. Other volunteers tell me horror stories involving full on whips. My schools, to be fair, are actually pretty good about corporal punishment. I’ve only seen three outright text-book examples (of course, I’m sure there were all sorts of other instances that I didn’t), but I felt like I was the one being hit each time.
Many of my teachers, while they won’t admit to hitting their learners, per se, still see nothing wrong with it as a teaching method, and herein lies the root of my problem:
In my eyes if you are capable of hitting a child openly and without remorse you are, with no shades of black and white, a Bad Person. In the eyes of my teachers and the people in my village, you are probably just a Caring Guardian. I have trouble talking to any teacher after I have seen them do this. I don’t want to be in their classroom, I don’t even want to look them in the eye or greet them in the morning. They have shifted catergories, moved into the unforgivable.
Is a good part of this a cultural thing? Yes, probably. I know perfectly well that corporal punishment was and is practiced in pretty much every school system that ever has existed. I know it is a very recent innovation that means that I (or more to the point, Robbie) never got called into an office and whapped good for whatever stupid thing I had done. I know all about nuns and rulers, and Mr. Spoon, and Roald Dahl’s stories, and all the rest of it. It happens, it happened, western civilization doesn’t seem to have come crashing down for it. But still. I was never hit as a child (maybe once, I have a vague recollection…), teachers in my classes never threatened to hit me, the very thought of violence as a disciplinary measure is something that I managed to grow up blissfully unaware of. And so when I see it, I am shocked. I consider it immoral, bad, I am incapable of seeing shades of grey. I cannot translate this as ‘culture’ even though every rational, far off part of me is saying that these are exactly the sort of clashes I was warned and taught about over and over.
Am I right? Are they wrong? I don’t know. I just can’t condone the violence as a solution, in any context, but I am willing to work towards understanding why my teachers can. Understand that I mean the rational, under control, occasional slap or pinch or whatever. I have also seen teachers simply lashing out at students at anger and in frustration, and I think that that is just wrong – no culture, no mitigations. Children should never be the vent for your aggravation. I don’t care how much the teacher hates their job or how poorly trained and frustrated they are. Unacceptable.
So what am I going to do about all this? I really don’t know. I’ll put on my workshops, I’ll explain the alternatives to every teacher I catch. I’ll tell them how against it I am and that I will walk out of any classroom where I see learners being hit. I’ll refuse to work with that teacher again until we work out a solution, a suitable set of disciplinary alternatives. It is, all my cultural qualms aside, against the law anyway.
But what does this mean for my cross cultural education? Do I just accept this as an example of “our cultures are different, hooray diversity!” Is it something I can change? Is it something I should bother changing? Is it inherently wrong or is it just my perspective?
Its that last one that gets me. Does cultural diversity translate to moral relativism? Do I get to be the one to draw the line in the sand?
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Quarterly Report
The other day as I waited in line to buy electricity for my family, an old man came up to me and said (in SiSwati), “Wait, are you THE Nomvula Sambo living in --------?” “Why yes, yes I am.” He then shook my hand and wandered off.
I am famous.
A few nights previous to that, I woke up to the feeling of something on my leg. It was a cockroach who had cleverly managed to sneak inside my mosquito net and commence crawling up the inside of my pajama pants.*
I am desired.
Later in the day I watched a woman at the grocery store do a visible double take when I told her that yes, in fact I was living in my village and not in Komatipoort.
I am…sort of confusing.
And so it goes as I find myself rushing towards the 6 month mark of my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer. That’s like the end of freshmen year, you’d think that I’d have learned something by now….you know, in theory.
What I probably have learned is why every other PCV I met during training, the ones who at that point had all been around for at least a year, kept telling us that we would end up scaling our ambitions back. That failure was sort of inevitable, and we would learn to be happy with ‘small victories.’ At the time I thought, “To heck with that! I came to Peace Corps to save the world and I’m going to do my best with the little corner I have!” I plotted workshops, young reader’s faires, 20 minutes of reading every morning, libraries I would put together, computer labs that I would build. I read policy documents on alternatives to corporal punishment and plotted all the facile answers I would give my teachers. I memorized curriculum booklets and waded through Department of Education policy documents, ready to explain all of them at the drop of a hat.
And I will still probably do a lot of that, but I’m also starting to realize that mostly those things are all external. The reason we are here, and the way that things will finally, eventually (someday…) change is much harder. Computer labs are great. Explaining policy is great, but at a certain point everything else is just external to good teaching practices. The way the schools will change, the way that things will get better, is just straight up better teaching. Kids here can’t read and they can’t think critically. You ask anybody “why?” and you get the blank stare to end them all. No computer lab or workshop is going to change that, only good teaching will. And I’m willing to help my teachers with that for the next 2 years ceaselessly. I’ll explain classroom management, and open-ended questions, and why essays are fun, and books are good, and sticks are bad until the end of time, but…that doesn’t really mean that they’ll be interested in it.
How do you convince people that the way things have been done practically forever really isn’t the way to do it at all, and instead they should try this? People don’t change their actions unless they see a really good reason, and currently many of my teachers don’t. It was good enough for them when they were in school. Their teachers beat them and they turned out all right. Why should they listen to the crazy PCV with the ridiculous, new, and difficult ideas?
Why indeed?
Turns out these are the small victories those in the know were talking about. When I can convince a teacher to erase the answers from the board and let her kids find it themselves for classwork. When someone else asks to borrow my book of grammar games (I was comp lit, okay?) and really does seem to notice that the ones encouraging creativity are better. When I can make at least one person understand the difference between regurgitating something and knowing it. Those are my victories. Tiny moments that happen maybe once a week, twice if the hippy gods are smiling down on me. I suppose that those are scaled down a bit from my original plans of saving the world, but they are what will make a difference, so I’ll go with it. Besides, I’ve got 18 more months.
*Oh yes, that is one very, very dead cockroach now. Simply unacceptable.
PS
Kelsey! I can't wait to see you!!
I am famous.
A few nights previous to that, I woke up to the feeling of something on my leg. It was a cockroach who had cleverly managed to sneak inside my mosquito net and commence crawling up the inside of my pajama pants.*
I am desired.
Later in the day I watched a woman at the grocery store do a visible double take when I told her that yes, in fact I was living in my village and not in Komatipoort.
I am…sort of confusing.
And so it goes as I find myself rushing towards the 6 month mark of my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer. That’s like the end of freshmen year, you’d think that I’d have learned something by now….you know, in theory.
What I probably have learned is why every other PCV I met during training, the ones who at that point had all been around for at least a year, kept telling us that we would end up scaling our ambitions back. That failure was sort of inevitable, and we would learn to be happy with ‘small victories.’ At the time I thought, “To heck with that! I came to Peace Corps to save the world and I’m going to do my best with the little corner I have!” I plotted workshops, young reader’s faires, 20 minutes of reading every morning, libraries I would put together, computer labs that I would build. I read policy documents on alternatives to corporal punishment and plotted all the facile answers I would give my teachers. I memorized curriculum booklets and waded through Department of Education policy documents, ready to explain all of them at the drop of a hat.
And I will still probably do a lot of that, but I’m also starting to realize that mostly those things are all external. The reason we are here, and the way that things will finally, eventually (someday…) change is much harder. Computer labs are great. Explaining policy is great, but at a certain point everything else is just external to good teaching practices. The way the schools will change, the way that things will get better, is just straight up better teaching. Kids here can’t read and they can’t think critically. You ask anybody “why?” and you get the blank stare to end them all. No computer lab or workshop is going to change that, only good teaching will. And I’m willing to help my teachers with that for the next 2 years ceaselessly. I’ll explain classroom management, and open-ended questions, and why essays are fun, and books are good, and sticks are bad until the end of time, but…that doesn’t really mean that they’ll be interested in it.
How do you convince people that the way things have been done practically forever really isn’t the way to do it at all, and instead they should try this? People don’t change their actions unless they see a really good reason, and currently many of my teachers don’t. It was good enough for them when they were in school. Their teachers beat them and they turned out all right. Why should they listen to the crazy PCV with the ridiculous, new, and difficult ideas?
Why indeed?
Turns out these are the small victories those in the know were talking about. When I can convince a teacher to erase the answers from the board and let her kids find it themselves for classwork. When someone else asks to borrow my book of grammar games (I was comp lit, okay?) and really does seem to notice that the ones encouraging creativity are better. When I can make at least one person understand the difference between regurgitating something and knowing it. Those are my victories. Tiny moments that happen maybe once a week, twice if the hippy gods are smiling down on me. I suppose that those are scaled down a bit from my original plans of saving the world, but they are what will make a difference, so I’ll go with it. Besides, I’ve got 18 more months.
*Oh yes, that is one very, very dead cockroach now. Simply unacceptable.
PS
Kelsey! I can't wait to see you!!
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Deep Thoughts With Steenbok
South Africa’s Wisest Village:
(In the spirit of the last few posts titles, I thought that I would compile some of the true gems of wisdom I hear in my village everyday. These are just the ones that have stuck in my head, for one reason or another.)
“If I could be president for a day, I would send half the women in Parliament packing. There’s too many of them, they should be at home cooking.” –Principal
“Hey Nomvula, you look nice today, you must have looked in a mirror this morning!” –Teacher
“Hey Nomvula, you look nice today…must be that week you spent with Bafana [the male volunteer down the road, all of us had just spent a week at training]!” –Teacher
“Where is the phonebook? I tell these people they need to keep track of the phonebook and make sure its always near the phone…we need the pages to smoke dagga [pot], they’re much thinner than newspaper.” –Teacher
“Wait, why are you laughing at us? Explain why ‘boys vs. girls’ is a bad debate topic.” –Teacher
“You know that when a learner gets sick and dies its because the teacher or principal went to a sangoma to curse them, right? And then the parents come, and they’re angry, and they charge us! And it’s the same if a woman’s husband dies, it is because she has gone to the sangoma. But if a husband’s wife dies, its okay, he has more.” –Principal.
And finally
"Unuka!!" [you smell!] - my 2 year old sister.
(In the spirit of the last few posts titles, I thought that I would compile some of the true gems of wisdom I hear in my village everyday. These are just the ones that have stuck in my head, for one reason or another.)
“If I could be president for a day, I would send half the women in Parliament packing. There’s too many of them, they should be at home cooking.” –Principal
“Hey Nomvula, you look nice today, you must have looked in a mirror this morning!” –Teacher
“Hey Nomvula, you look nice today…must be that week you spent with Bafana [the male volunteer down the road, all of us had just spent a week at training]!” –Teacher
“Where is the phonebook? I tell these people they need to keep track of the phonebook and make sure its always near the phone…we need the pages to smoke dagga [pot], they’re much thinner than newspaper.” –Teacher
“Wait, why are you laughing at us? Explain why ‘boys vs. girls’ is a bad debate topic.” –Teacher
“You know that when a learner gets sick and dies its because the teacher or principal went to a sangoma to curse them, right? And then the parents come, and they’re angry, and they charge us! And it’s the same if a woman’s husband dies, it is because she has gone to the sangoma. But if a husband’s wife dies, its okay, he has more.” –Principal.
And finally
"Unuka!!" [you smell!] - my 2 year old sister.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Pictures!!
Okay, todays the day. After 6 months I finally figured out how to make it happen. Ready?
Photos:
At swearing-in on September 21. We are now officially Peace Corps Volunteers. Uh oh.
Some of the kids from Bhambatha Primary School -- my key school -- on a bus on the way to the Pretoria zoo.
A view of Kruger National Park without any animals at all.
Little girls perform traditional Swazi dances at a grade R graduation.
My "pack"from Bundu. They used to follow me around screaming "Nomvula!!!"-- well, me or any other volunteer who might happen to look vaguely white and blonde.
Photos:
At swearing-in on September 21. We are now officially Peace Corps Volunteers. Uh oh.
Some of the kids from Bhambatha Primary School -- my key school -- on a bus on the way to the Pretoria zoo.
A view of Kruger National Park without any animals at all.
Little girls perform traditional Swazi dances at a grade R graduation.
My "pack"from Bundu. They used to follow me around screaming "Nomvula!!!"-- well, me or any other volunteer who might happen to look vaguely white and blonde.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
"If I could be president for a day...
...the very first thing I would do is send half the women in parliament packing.
There are too many, they should be home cooking anyway." ~my key school principal (followed, of course, by a healthy debate. Dana, if you're reading this, that one's for you.)
Its just a good season for quotes or something in the village, I don't know.
The village that I'm living in is a little bit of an anomaly. Its considered 'deep rural' (can you believe I asked for that? In the US I think I've been camping all of 3 times my whole life, and then one day in training I find myself requesting a super-rural village. Where did that come from? But I love it) however it is fairly large -- I think at least 10,000 people, judging by the primary schools. It is in the middle of nowhere though, and I guess thats where the designation comes from. The nearest village to it is about 5 or 6 miles away, through pretty much scrub and nothing. My official 'shopping city' is 45 minutes by car on a good day, 2.5 hours by taxi on a bad one. We have half a tar road and no bodies of water anywhere nearby. There are donkey carts and lots and lots of cattle that parade past my window every day like clockwork (they are quite possibly they only living things in the village that seem to pay attention to any sort of schedule). The sangoma (traditional healer) lives next door, and while apparently she is semi-retired I still hear drum beats every now and again coming from her rondavale. Never on sundays, of course, because thats when the church on the other side of my house has their services. Professional courtesy and all that.
The people here speak 2 languages (well, the people here speak 2 home languages. They probably actually speak at least 4 a piece and smatterings of a few more.). Fortunately one of those languages is the one I learned/am learning -- siSwati -- and the other is tsonga/shongon. (Tsonga or xtsonga is the language, shongon is the culture group but they're used sort of interchangeably. Sort of.) Anyways, people speak siSwati because we're near Swaziland. They speak Tsonga for a couple of reasons. We are pretty close to Mozambique (where tsonga is spoken) and there are refugees who have crossed the border over the years and through the various political upheavals. But mostly, well, my village is like a moment in time. Apartheid's leftovers, one of those messy little things you can't really clean up now.
Nothing where I live dates from before 1954. Thats when the oldest church was erected, when the first school was founded. When I was told this, I thought, "hmmm..." and thought back to my days in Mr. Gray's world history class. Reading through some of the school's files, though, there it all was in neatly printed black and white. So matter of fact.
"The village is a result of the group areas act. Families were uprooted from rich farmland of Komatipoort and the outlying areas and moved to this area, approximately 40k from the nearest town-center."
In komatipoort they speak shongon. All the older people in my village speak shongon. And there's the Group Areas act in its stark simplicity. I'm living in something I read in a textbook nearly 7 years ago.
There are too many, they should be home cooking anyway." ~my key school principal (followed, of course, by a healthy debate. Dana, if you're reading this, that one's for you.)
Its just a good season for quotes or something in the village, I don't know.
The village that I'm living in is a little bit of an anomaly. Its considered 'deep rural' (can you believe I asked for that? In the US I think I've been camping all of 3 times my whole life, and then one day in training I find myself requesting a super-rural village. Where did that come from? But I love it) however it is fairly large -- I think at least 10,000 people, judging by the primary schools. It is in the middle of nowhere though, and I guess thats where the designation comes from. The nearest village to it is about 5 or 6 miles away, through pretty much scrub and nothing. My official 'shopping city' is 45 minutes by car on a good day, 2.5 hours by taxi on a bad one. We have half a tar road and no bodies of water anywhere nearby. There are donkey carts and lots and lots of cattle that parade past my window every day like clockwork (they are quite possibly they only living things in the village that seem to pay attention to any sort of schedule). The sangoma (traditional healer) lives next door, and while apparently she is semi-retired I still hear drum beats every now and again coming from her rondavale. Never on sundays, of course, because thats when the church on the other side of my house has their services. Professional courtesy and all that.
The people here speak 2 languages (well, the people here speak 2 home languages. They probably actually speak at least 4 a piece and smatterings of a few more.). Fortunately one of those languages is the one I learned/am learning -- siSwati -- and the other is tsonga/shongon. (Tsonga or xtsonga is the language, shongon is the culture group but they're used sort of interchangeably. Sort of.) Anyways, people speak siSwati because we're near Swaziland. They speak Tsonga for a couple of reasons. We are pretty close to Mozambique (where tsonga is spoken) and there are refugees who have crossed the border over the years and through the various political upheavals. But mostly, well, my village is like a moment in time. Apartheid's leftovers, one of those messy little things you can't really clean up now.
Nothing where I live dates from before 1954. Thats when the oldest church was erected, when the first school was founded. When I was told this, I thought, "hmmm..." and thought back to my days in Mr. Gray's world history class. Reading through some of the school's files, though, there it all was in neatly printed black and white. So matter of fact.
"The village is a result of the group areas act. Families were uprooted from rich farmland of Komatipoort and the outlying areas and moved to this area, approximately 40k from the nearest town-center."
In komatipoort they speak shongon. All the older people in my village speak shongon. And there's the Group Areas act in its stark simplicity. I'm living in something I read in a textbook nearly 7 years ago.
"Nomvula, you look nice today...
...you must have looked in a mirror this morning"
~One of my teachers. (This may or may not have been far less insulting if said in swati...I think).
Here is a list of things I don’t miss from the US:
*Smog
*WalMart
*Arbys
*Driving through LA at 5pm on a weekday
*Having an action star for a Governor
*The persistent, nagging feeling that eventually I would have to find something to do with my life.
Here is a list of things in South Africa that make me think of home:
*My sister lying on a mat in the shade and chatting with her best friend
*The weird steel cans coke uses here instead of aluminum
*The mall in Nelspruit
*The flashing clock in a taxi that looks just like the one in my mom’s car
*The way the busses all pull out of the station together, and the drivers flash thumbs up and jocky for position…I used to do that, too.
Its strange, and you hear it a lot, but it really is the little things in life that grab you in an immediate and abrupt way. The busses and the drivers in Malelane make me think of Davis and of Unitrans so much. The way we were almost playing games with our 40 foot, 10 ton toys, the way they do it too. It makes me smile on a few levels – at the memory, at the sense of kinship, at the knowledge that of all the people on the bus they would never suspect that I’m the one who ‘gets it.’ The way my teachers joke around in the staff room brings me back to the time I spent subbing, and the times when I got the in-jokes, too.
Here I am the perpetual outsider, by my skin color of course, but also by my language, my clothes, by my expectations of friends and family, even my very thought processes are strange and different -- untaught. I hear young men walk down the street in front of my house at dusk. They’re laughing, and talking, yelling at each other. Its probably closer to a stumble than a walk, if I wanted to get close enough to examine it. How many times have I done the same march home, surrounded by my friends? How many times have I roamed a neighborhood at an hour when ‘respectable’ people were in bed and becoming severely irritated by whatever those damn university hooligans were up to? I want to smile as the men walk by my house, but instead I melt back behind the door, hoping that they don’t see me. I’ve been there, yes, they should not be so alien, so frightening to me, but…they are. How many little old ladies do you think we frightened on our midnight walks? How many people felt like the outsider because of something I said or did? Who always felt like they were on the margins, unable to quite fight their way through that invisible boundary of voice and thought and color?
Its me now, trapped by the little things.
~One of my teachers. (This may or may not have been far less insulting if said in swati...I think).
Here is a list of things I don’t miss from the US:
*Smog
*WalMart
*Arbys
*Driving through LA at 5pm on a weekday
*Having an action star for a Governor
*The persistent, nagging feeling that eventually I would have to find something to do with my life.
Here is a list of things in South Africa that make me think of home:
*My sister lying on a mat in the shade and chatting with her best friend
*The weird steel cans coke uses here instead of aluminum
*The mall in Nelspruit
*The flashing clock in a taxi that looks just like the one in my mom’s car
*The way the busses all pull out of the station together, and the drivers flash thumbs up and jocky for position…I used to do that, too.
Its strange, and you hear it a lot, but it really is the little things in life that grab you in an immediate and abrupt way. The busses and the drivers in Malelane make me think of Davis and of Unitrans so much. The way we were almost playing games with our 40 foot, 10 ton toys, the way they do it too. It makes me smile on a few levels – at the memory, at the sense of kinship, at the knowledge that of all the people on the bus they would never suspect that I’m the one who ‘gets it.’ The way my teachers joke around in the staff room brings me back to the time I spent subbing, and the times when I got the in-jokes, too.
Here I am the perpetual outsider, by my skin color of course, but also by my language, my clothes, by my expectations of friends and family, even my very thought processes are strange and different -- untaught. I hear young men walk down the street in front of my house at dusk. They’re laughing, and talking, yelling at each other. Its probably closer to a stumble than a walk, if I wanted to get close enough to examine it. How many times have I done the same march home, surrounded by my friends? How many times have I roamed a neighborhood at an hour when ‘respectable’ people were in bed and becoming severely irritated by whatever those damn university hooligans were up to? I want to smile as the men walk by my house, but instead I melt back behind the door, hoping that they don’t see me. I’ve been there, yes, they should not be so alien, so frightening to me, but…they are. How many little old ladies do you think we frightened on our midnight walks? How many people felt like the outsider because of something I said or did? Who always felt like they were on the margins, unable to quite fight their way through that invisible boundary of voice and thought and color?
Its me now, trapped by the little things.
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