Rwanda's Education System

Because I teach kids and help them with their homework quite often here, I have had a pretty good taste of the Rwandan educational system. Education in a country like Rwanda seems even more important than anywhere else: good education is probably a good way out of the circle of revenge, intolerance and propaganda, reason instead violence, hopefully a way to escape poverty. But the educational system here is still rather messy. While French used to be the official language a few years ago, the government has now switched to English. For kids under the age of 10 or so this is much easier than for older kids who first grew up in French and Kinyarwandan. Everything is taught in English in schools but most people’s English is limited (even teachers’ sometimes). So, kids barely know basic English (such as the name of colors or English grammar) yet get taught science, math, social studies in English. Most of the children have no idea what the teacher is talking about. So they just copy down notes from the board and learn them by heart then regurgitate them. They don’t know how to explain concepts in their own words and often, because they don’t understand what they are writing, they make a lot of mistakes and so also learn mistakes. Often they have missing notes because the teachers go too fast. There isn’t a lot of interaction between teachers and students, not a lot of place left for imagination or interactive learning. They learn what they are taught and that’s it. Now when you know how well propaganda worked during the genocide because most people failed to question what the government and radio propagandists said, you wish kids would learn a little differently.

Another problem: fees. Every child has to pay school fees, even if they’re poor. This means that a lot of kids cannot afford to go to school. I have already paid a couple of school fees for kids (it's not very expoensiver...well from our point of view) because I just find it unbelievable that certain kids get sent back home because they haven’t paid their fees. A lot of kids here REALLY want to learn. You see it when you sit down with them. They do their best to understand. So...yeah...some changes need to be made in the educational system.

I've tried to upload pictures...failed miserably.The connection is too slow.I'll try from another internet cafe. Sorry about that