Apparently in another town, at one of the schools another one of my group is teaching at I think, some student stabbed another student and killed him. This stuff seems to happen fairly regularly here. The students have a violent side because they haven't been sensitized to it like children in America. There is violence everywhere. Children are flogged all the time to discipline them for sometimes really stupid things the teachers feel they have done. I initially was ignoring it but it's starting to bother me just because it is so dumb and damaging. It is entirely obvious to me that the teachers just do it to feel power over the students. They feel that it is okay to treat the students like animals. This comes out of the whole hierarchy thing. The students should respect teachers simply because they are older and in a position of power over them. I don't think this is the right way to see things. The students should respect us because we are respectable and allowing them the privilege of becoming educated. I depend on the students liking me and finding my lessons instructive, not on them being afraid that I'm going to beat them.
So today the teacher that was the main target (the letter began Dear Mr. stupid ....) was all pissed and taking his anger out on the students, prowling around them with a length of rubber. Students that aren't dressed properly get sent to kneel on the grass behind the rest of the assembly. Today there were 30 or so students upset for being punished for mostly no reason besides this guy power tripping. This guy is going to get eaten alive, and maybe even have violence against him. I am sure he is going to leave the school on his own, if the students don't make him. He thinks he should be respected when he is not behaving respectably. The other day he brought a kid out of assembly to kneel and said "You are a goat!" and the student talked back "no, I'm a human being". I think this guy's need to feel power over the students is his main problem.
Flogging is a problem here, still. I tell them that Americans recently used to flog and then we realized that it was ineffective, damaging to the students, and there were better ways to do things. I feel like flogging ruins the happy learning environment that a school needs to have successful students, makes the students angry rather than pensive about what they have done wrong, is just a power trip for a teacher, promotes a culture of violence, and just feels to me to be a primitive and unthought out means of getting a message across. Discipline should not be about the punishment as much as showing the student what they have done wrong in such a way that they themselves choose to not do it again. Flogging is just a means to make students afraid to do it again, but it lays no foundation of character.
Other ways of disciplining students are better. One punishment is having them kneel outside or in front of the class. Another is having them 'brush' or cut the grass around the campus with a cutlass, after school. Sometimes students are suspended. Other times they have to fetch water for the teachers lounge. I feel like all of these punishments are pretty good, at least compared with flogging. In any case, I just don't feel like disciplining students. It's not in my character to find pleasure in expressing power over my students in this way. I haven't disciplined a single student. Students talk in my class, but it hasn't bothered me too much really. Most of them seem to listen when I am talking (typically loudly at first). If it gets really bad, I'll send them out of the class or have them kneel. I figure so long as I am well liked, I'll not have any significant disrespect. The students like me because I treat them like human beings and have interesting things to say, so I hope it stays that way. I can see how if the students aren't on your good side, you can have a very miserable time.
Other things:
I am having a padded chair made with a stool so that I will actually have a bit of luxury inside of my house. I can't wait to be able to read in a comfortable chair.
I am finally getting my hands on some country rice, which they grow here. It's delicious and filling. All I have been eating and been able to buy is this stupid imported rice, which doesn't make sense to me since the main occupation here is growing the country rice. My friend Mr. Mansaray has a farm and has been harvesting, so he is going to mill a bag of it for me. It's really expensive, but the bag should last me close to the whole two years.
This project of building and operating a seed bank is moving along. We are finding a place to build the store. I still need to talk with NGOs to try to find a little bit of funding so we can buy the starting seed. Once the store is built and the seed put away, we can organize a way to run it sustainably in a way that won't allow people to be corrupt, so that it can grow and benefit the larger community.
There is this scholarship student exchange program called the Kennedy Lugar Youth Exchange and Study that will allow a student from here to go live with an American family and go to an American high school for a year. I'm confident some of these students are really smart. So, I have been doing a selection process for one boy and one girl. I had them write essays and now I have picked the two. I am really hoping we can get at least one of these students into this life changing program.
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