Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Education, Random, Uncategorized, zimbabwe | Date: Feb 24 2009 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi folks,

Chishakwe Ranch (where I live) is involved in an environmental education program in some of the schools around the conservancy.  I went along with the managers today to have a look at one of the schools and help out with one of their activities (painting chairs with wild animal pictures and information). 

The chairs before being painted

It was a very interesting day.  Despite it being almost the end of February, the school was not yet officially open, because the teachers are still on strike demanding pay in foreign currency.  They have been on strike since last year, and 94% of rural schools have failed to open this year. 

However, the dedicated headmaster of this school, despite not being paid and having no guidance from the education ministry managed to gather together the children involved in the activity and we turned up to a group of 30 or so very poorly dressed but well behaved and keen students.  All of them participated with enthusiasm in the activity, despite the fact that many had never painted anything before, and the result was a colourful array of chairs for their classroom, all illustrating different wildlife species.

Nonethless it was shocking to see how basic and bare the classrooms were - not a single picture or poster or teaching aid anywhere on the peeling and crumbling walls.  And the level of English was appalling too, which is very sad because the exams are set in English, and there will be little hope of any of them passing (even if they do ever manage to pay markers to mark last year’s exam scripts).  This is not helped by the fact that the vast majority of trained teachers have left the country and untrained and inexperienced people stand in as teachers.

It worries me this, because I believe that Zimbabwe is the wonderful country that it is, and has survived so long despite the worst, in large part due to the excellent education of its people.  Zimbabweans at school prior to 1990 grew up with an excellent education system which provided them with sound morals and an honest and hard-working attitude, hence the resourcefulness of people today.  With the lack of even basic education (schools were open for a total of only 23 days last year in many places), the prospects for the future of the country are worrying.  Where will the next generation of leaders come from?

We at the Wild Dog Project are keen to do something about this, and are currently working on ways of supplementing teachers salaries so that they are able to stay in their jobs, providing scholarships to the poorest and brightest children (from primary school up to university level), and providing resources to the schools.  We’ll tie this in with enhanced efforts in the environmental education program, but really we just want to keep children in school and keep decent teachers so that the children in the area can grow up with a decent chance in life. I’ll keep you posted with our progress.

I’ll add some pictures of the chair-painting experience to this post in a couple of days,

Back soon,

Rosemary

Tags: environmental education, schools, wildlife education, zimbabwe