(I speak Afrikaans)
It is May and it's cold! I am not used to the opposite season thing here in SA yet but I'm sure that will change. When I arrived in late January, it was really hot and I never imagined that I would ever be needing a jacket.
I thought that today I would write a bit about my learning Afrikaans. Back during my training we had learned a couple lines of Afrikaans to introduce ourselves. Our main focuses were on Zulu, Siswati, Ndebele, and Tsonga; not many people in PC SA speak Afrikaans. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is that most volunteers live in villages where there are no Afrikaans-speaking people.
The history of Afrikaans is really complicated but interesting. The language is a descendant of German and Dutch and was originally brought by the European settlers who came to SA. Forgive me if any information here is not the most accurate; I'm kind of writing this off of the bits of information I've seen and read over here. The language was influenced by many immigrants, including Asians, English, French, and German speakers. Afrikaans, therefore, has many borrowed words and sounds from eveywhere in the world.
Things get complicated with the Anglo-Boer War in the beginning of the 20th century and the subsequent rise of the Afrikaaner-controlled government. Much of the prevailing attitude was that Afrikaans should be spoken to Afrikaaners, not English. Blacks had to learn or at least understand Afrikaans; many people still say "thank you" to me in Afrikaans, even though they know I speak English.
Now, in the new SA, the Afrikaans language is in a strange place. It is seen as the language of apartheid and many people I've talked to do not like the language at all; they prefer English as a second language (after Zulu or Sepedi). However, many schools, especially ones with a large number of white children, still teach Afrikaans. Afrikaans is still widely spoken in the Cape province.
I am starting to learn Afrikaans for several reasons: many people I know speak it, my supervisor speaks it, and I might be moving to a school where they teach in Afrikaans. I think that this experience will give me a better understanding of the Afrikaaner perspective of SA; I've already talked to many of them who feel their culture, language, and lifestyle is under attack by the new government. That will be a whole different entry altogether.
As for now I'm listening to an Afrikaans radio station, reading children's books, and studying from language books. The sounds in Afrikaans are similar to German and it sounds so cool when you yell! I hope you are all doing well and hope to hear from you soon.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
English and Mats
Hello to you all! How are you doing? I am seeing reports on CNN about a bad oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Is there anything exciting going on in the US?
As you may or may not have guessed from the title, I thought I would write about education here in South Africa. While the word "math" is spelled the same here, people pronounce the word as "mats." When many African languages are written using English letters, the "th" is often pronounced as a "t."
But anyway, the school that I help teach at two days a week is a small farm school with about 25 students. My village was built by a timber company to house the workers; the company also built a school so that the workers' children could go to school. Because the school is so small, it would not be cost-effective to send many teachers there. There aren't enough teachers, it seems. So, the two teachers at the school split the children up into groups. There are kids from grade R to grade 7 (about 13 years old).
As many people here in SA will tell you, the education system is in very bad condition. I was really amazed by this fact: the level of passing for every subject except one is 40%. Anything above that and the child will pass the course. In English, the passing threshold is 30%. So, the standards here are extremely low and yet many children do not pass their classes.
One big reason for this, as I have seen and heard, is that education from 4-7 is done in English. For a students this presents a very big problem: if you are not very good at English, you would have no chance at the other subjects, especially math. Many of the children can hold basic conversations in English--this is easy to practice. But conversations and vocabulary about math? Who does that? So, math comprehension is not what it could be. The same goes for many of the other subjects.
While the language barriers are very tough, I think that the greatest barrier to education (at least in my village) is an economic one. I have seen several schools here and many of them have ample resources for their students. My school, on the other hand, does not have much money or resources.
So what does one do at a school like this? At this point I am still thinking about what I can do or achieve here. While I can teach the students here and help them pass their tests, the goal of a PC volunteer should be to implement sustainable change. At this small school, finding a sustainable project will be very difficult. I'm sure I will write more about teaching here, but for the time being, I'm trying to get the students to khrema (memorize) their times-tables. It is a good review for me as well!
As you may or may not have guessed from the title, I thought I would write about education here in South Africa. While the word "math" is spelled the same here, people pronounce the word as "mats." When many African languages are written using English letters, the "th" is often pronounced as a "t."
But anyway, the school that I help teach at two days a week is a small farm school with about 25 students. My village was built by a timber company to house the workers; the company also built a school so that the workers' children could go to school. Because the school is so small, it would not be cost-effective to send many teachers there. There aren't enough teachers, it seems. So, the two teachers at the school split the children up into groups. There are kids from grade R to grade 7 (about 13 years old).
As many people here in SA will tell you, the education system is in very bad condition. I was really amazed by this fact: the level of passing for every subject except one is 40%. Anything above that and the child will pass the course. In English, the passing threshold is 30%. So, the standards here are extremely low and yet many children do not pass their classes.
One big reason for this, as I have seen and heard, is that education from 4-7 is done in English. For a students this presents a very big problem: if you are not very good at English, you would have no chance at the other subjects, especially math. Many of the children can hold basic conversations in English--this is easy to practice. But conversations and vocabulary about math? Who does that? So, math comprehension is not what it could be. The same goes for many of the other subjects.
While the language barriers are very tough, I think that the greatest barrier to education (at least in my village) is an economic one. I have seen several schools here and many of them have ample resources for their students. My school, on the other hand, does not have much money or resources.
So what does one do at a school like this? At this point I am still thinking about what I can do or achieve here. While I can teach the students here and help them pass their tests, the goal of a PC volunteer should be to implement sustainable change. At this small school, finding a sustainable project will be very difficult. I'm sure I will write more about teaching here, but for the time being, I'm trying to get the students to khrema (memorize) their times-tables. It is a good review for me as well!
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