School daze

..
I went to school yesterday with Dami, the 15 year-old young man who is the son of the pineapple seller on my block. He was going to bring me for "Culture Day" last week, but I couldn't make it, so I tagged along with him today.

It was pretty interesting. The assistant principal from the senior level school wouldn't let me sit in on any of Dami's classes, so I went to the adjoining junior level school, where the principal gave me permission.

The facilities were spartan, but not so bad. I'm sure they have computers all over the place in U.S. schools now, but when we were growing up, I don't remember having much more than a teacher, desks, and a blackboard. All of which were more-or-less present yesterday -- although I learned that the students have to make their own desks and bring them from home.

The kids were eager to learn, and the level of what they were studying seemed pretty high. In one math class they were differentiating y with respect to x, which impressed me and brought back some memories. The most disappointing thing, though, was the quality of the instruction. One teacher spent half an hour carefully copying Ten Points of Negotiation onto the blackboard from a book she had. What a way to teach negotiation! The kids were supposed to be copying the same points into their notebooks, but mostly they were just playing around behind the teacher's back, or falling asleep.

Fine art class was a little better, especially when the teacher had some kids come to the blackboard to sketch the logos of MTN and Glo, the Nigerian cell phone companies. She was making the discussion relevant to their lives! But then she lost them with a long discussion of pottery of all things. The kids couldn't have cared less.
..