Out of Africa
Northwestern professor chronicles sabbatical experiences on another continent
Teaching and writing
8 November 2004
I substitute-taught for three days—an exhausting experience. The students are incredibly noisy and seem to regard it as a natural state of affairs. The teachers say they’re loud because in their communities, a person speaking quietly would be suspected of gossiping about someone else present. Individually, the students are considerate and engaging, but as a group, they cannot seem to stop interrupting each other.
The classroom is reasonably attractive in appearance, but the floor is concrete, the chairs are these plastic sculptured things with thin metal legs, and the ceiling is painted, with no sound-absorbing tile anywhere. So when one person talks, the next has to talk louder, and for large classes, you get a huge feedback effect, topped finally by the teacher’s screaming at them to be quiet, after which the din soon begins to build again.
South Africa has high-stakes testing, and it has taught the students to be even more grade-oriented than American students are. Teachers spend a great deal of time preparing tests and giving tests and specifically preparing students for the tests, and that’s pretty boring teaching. Students too rarely have an experience of meaning or pleasure in the classroom.
Great names. Try pronouncing, and then spelling these: Lebogang Malatji, Hlamulo Mashele, Ntiyiso Mukanse, Mpho Ramaselele, Granny Mushwana, Mantlhoa Modiba, Nkosinathi Fungene.
12 January 2005
It was a good day for writing: I think I have found a center, of sorts, that will also answer questions in some chapters where I wasn’t sure how I’d find my way through. Oddly, it’s mostly things I knew before and have written about before but didn’t expect to connect to this project. Even bits and pieces from my dissertation that still seem to have some life in them.
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