The Reality of It.

As I sat at my desk on Thursday trying to write my midterm exams for my classes, I must admit that I was quite discouraged. It’s one thing to expect my students to learn and understand the difficult topics in the curriculum, but it’s a whole new battle when it comes to the national exams. I fully believe that challenging students is the only way they will ever reach their full potential, but the challenge must be reasonable and attainable. When the material is so far beyond comprehension, then what is the purpose of even attempting? And when the only thing that matters is your national exam at the end of the year…well, then, what is the purpose?

Just to give you an idea of what I mean, one of the topics Form 2 learns is transposition of formulas. Simply put, rearranging formulas to make various letters the subject…

Ok, like this. Make y the subject of ax + by + c = 0.
                                                            by = -ax – c

                                                            y = (-ax - c)/b

Really, it’s simple algebra. Nothing more than a little rearranging. And my students actually do understand it for the most part! They can transpose simple to moderately complex formulas, which in my opinion, as a sophomore in high school, is great! However, the kicker is when they get to their national exam in November, and are expected to solve problems like this:

Make g the subject of the formula.

WHY??? What is the purpose of asking such a difficult question? Why not simply test for understanding of the concept instead of targeting the top 0.1% of the students here. To be honest, when I tried to solve this problem, I also got it wrong…and I have a college degree in mathematics and was taught in my native language. When I plan my lessons, I try to target the middle of the class because I feel inadequate if I teach to the top 2 students out of 75 kids in my classroom. But at the same time, if I don’t focus solely on those 2, then they won’t pass either because we won’t cover enough of the curriculum. But even for them, they will have a rough time passing even if I taught only the two of them every day of the week for 2 hours. And I say this sincerely, as I don’t know if I would be able to score much over 20% (a passing score) without a book or a calculator. Sorry for the rambling…but this is my daily struggle…

When it really comes down to it, it breaks my heart for these students. They are facing so many challenges in life already: carrying water on their heads daily, walking several kilometers to and from school, not knowing when they will get their next meal or how they will pay for their school fees, and studying by candlelight. And then to expect them to learn such a demanding curriculum on top of all of this. The reality of it just seems unfair. And then I have students ask me “Why all white people are brighter than black people if we all pray to a single God?” Well, I might think that too if the roles were reversed. Even though some of my students are brilliant, including the student who asked this question.  They just have a skewed perspective because they think to be “bright” they need to know how to derive the quadratic formula on their national exams. (Even I wouldn’t want to derive the quadratic formula…and I love math a whole heck of a lot!)

So this is it. The reality of it. And while I won’t be able to teach my students everything they need to know, and while the vast majority won’t pass their exams, if we can enjoy our remaining classes together and if I can leave knowing that I’ve at least managed to teach everyone something, then I’ll take it as a success.