Education system as seen on the first day of school

On Monday at noon I was sitting outside drinking tea (as I often am), and watching kids come home for lunch on the first day of school for the 2011-2012 year. In some ways, it very much resembles the first day of school at home. Everyone is dressed in new clothes, I see bedazzled blue jeans, easter dresses, polo shirts, tiny 5-year-old-sized suits, neatly tailored traditional “complets” in wax and bazin. The little “wahabi” girls from down the street come home with their bright backpacks on the outside of their black robes, under their headscarves. The girls all have new braids or weaves in, and everyone is walking in that serious, careful way kids walk when they have been warned not to get their clothes dirty. Older brothers and sisters come home holding their younger siblings hands and shiny new Barbie and Transformers backpacks. Order starts to break down as they get closer to home, some of the boys take off their shoes and get their feet and the cuffs of their pants dusty, kids start to run, and roughhouse. High schoolers start to come by in co-ed groups, flirting before they get back in sight of their parents. It is a colorful, hopeful picture, and I couldn't help but smile. At the same time though, I am afraid for all of these kids, thinking about the system they are up against.

Before I launch into what is sure to be a woefully incomplete explanation of the problems of the Malian education system, I want to point out that a lot of these problems will not seem unfamiliar to educators, students, and parents in the US. As is the case with, for example, the unemployment debate, the scale of the education crisis in Mali is more massive than that of our (extremely grave) crisis at home.

The basic structure of the Malian system is as follows: children enter school in kindergarten and from that time until 6th grade they are in “premier cycle” (first cycle). Thankfully, the government has recently abolished the exam that students used to take between 6th and 7th grade and now passing 6th grade is all that is required to move on to "second cycle" which goes from 7th to 9th grade. After 9th grade, students take the DEF (Diplome d'Education Fondementale) exam. Your score on this exam, as well as the age at which you take it, determines your next step. If you pass the exam before age 15, the government will assign you to a high school based on your score. Higher scoring students will be placed in “lycées” (high schools); the higher your score, the better the school (the government will pay for scholarships at private school for high scoring students). Lower scores will get you sent to technical high schools. The difference between the two is that students at technical schools do not take the Bac exam after 12th grade and do not go on to university. If you take the DEF exam after age 15, the government is not required to place you at all, and your family must pay for you to attend school. As a result, older students almost always go to technical school, which is less expensive. Lycée students specialize in one of several "filières" (tracks) and go on to take the fearsome "bac." Depending on their score on this exam, and the age at which they take it, they may or may not move on to university.

This picture is complicated by the fact that it does not even include the wide variety of medrasas (or Koranic schools) that many children here attend either for a couple years before starting mainstream school, or in place of primary school. It also ignores the substantial role that money plays in the system. It is possible to pay for a student to pass a grade, and this payment is so routine and formalized that it is considered as distinct from a bribe. Families can also pay to place their children in better schools than their DEF score warranted, and only families with means can afford to pay for students to continue school if they took the DEF or Bac late. Many students also take "cours privés" (private classes) outside of school, a service also only currently available to paying customers. Finally, it should be noted that public school in Mali is not free, the difference between public and private schools being that private schools students pay monthly fees in addition to their inscription fees.

Inside the classroom, overcrowding is a huge problem. Even with the veritable explosion of private schools (there are 3 on our street that I know of), there is simply not enough physical capacity. Private schools range widely in quality (the only standard appears to be that they follow the same curriculum as everyone else), and are often more accessible than public schools. Class size pretty much starts at 40 and goes up. At my sister Fadima's high school, there are 12 classes of kids in 12th grade and her class alone has 63 students. At public schools, class size can reach almost 100 students in middle and high school, with dozens of classes in each grade.

Then there is the content of classroom education itself. With the exception of a few community schools, French is the sole language of instruction, which is problematic considering that almost none of the students speak French at home. Immersion is a successful strategy for language learning with young children, but when information is presented entirely devoid of context in the form of rote memorization from the blackboard the children are not learning the language. In many cases it is questionable if they are learning anything. The teachers themselves went through this same system and commonly teach incorrect French that is noticeable even to me. The children in my host family attend some of the better private schools in our neighborhood and my niece in 8th grade cannot read, and even my niece in 4th grade, who is consistently at the top of her class, knows only extremely limited French and has trouble with anything that deviates from what she is memorizing at the moment. I have thus far not witnessed any questions that engage students' critical thinking, or even their opinions. Then again, with 60+ kids in a classroom, and no discussion of alternatives, I don't know what else the teachers could be expected to do.

All of this, of course, applies only to the children who actually make it into a classroom, which many rural Malians (and some in the cities as well), especially girls, do not. Of those who do, many will drop out after 3rd grade, or 6th grade, and many will quit after they fail the DEF. Of course, even for those who do make it all the way through university, there are very few jobs waiting. Considering the situation makes my head and my heart hurt.

Our project hopes to intervene in this tangled web for one group of kids in one neighborhood and offer them access not only to books and “cours privés” not previously available, but also the opportunity to engage with different styles of learning, in smaller groups and in more creative ways. The problem is enormous, but we have to start somewhere. As Baïssou, Robert, and most Malians I know are fond of saying: "dooni, dooni." Little by little.