The day before yesterday, our secondary school teachers were discussing the challenges that they face in their schools and I was struck by how similar their problems are to the challenges facing Canadian teachers. They talked about truancy, troublesome student behaviour, the lack of learning materials, not enough books and that many of their students simply don't like to study. They even brought up the problem of parents not supporting teachers.
Teachers discussing school problems
The challenges that they face are of course different in scale. Compared to Canadian students Tanzanian kids are very well behaved and Canadian teachers have a whole lot more resources than Tanzanian ones.
Still, I was reminded of the days when I taught George Orwell's, Nineteen Eighty Four. There is a passage in that book that talks about the sky being the same for everyone and that all over the world, whether it be Eastasia or Eurasia or here, people are ignorant of one another's existence and are held apart by lies and hatred but that they are almost the same people.
Michael and Mindy painting a world map on the wall of Kiteto Secondary School
Trying to make the whole world their students' oyster
The discussion brought Orwell's passage home to me. Our similarities far out weight our differences.
The sky over the Main Street in Kibaya
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