Education...(and a little more sex)

Con (Daddy Botshabelo) invited us to the WestCol main campus for a tour this week. WestCol is a nation-wide college system with 50 locations throughout South Africa. Because the original kids at Botshabelo are getting older, college is their next step. However, sending the students to college is expensive because it is so far from Botshabelo. In the last year or so, Con has been advocating and coordinating for a WestCol satellite campus to open here for their kids. Luckily, all of his hard work has paid off and the WestCol-Botshabelo campus begins this Monday!!! (tomorrow) The students will be able to choose one of two programs: electrical engineering or hospitality.

During our visit we got an intense history lesson on the colonization of South Africa and the South African educational system (which is very different from ours). Like the States, students begin elementary school (what they call "primary" school) in Grade 1 (AKA 1st grade). Their primary school goes up until Grade 8 and then Grade 9 begins their high school. Then after Grade 9, they can chose whether they want to go straight to vocational school or continue through Grade 12. Here the term “college” means vocational school. Most of the students that go through Grade 12 ultimately go straight to university (like our college)...while the college kids usually go straight to work. So, the university system is (surprisingly? eh, not so much) made of a disproportionate number of white students (go figure).

Another interesting fact about the South African school system is that most of the black families really really really want their children in an English speaking school. Obviously, they've seen the English speakers go farther in this country...unfortunately this comes with great costs. Their children enter Grade 1 without knowing any English, as their parents teach them their mother tongue at home...this causes a significant delay in their learning compared to the white children. This also contributes to the national math crisis where only 9% of the children are passing. Many studies have been conducted to find the source of this failure, and have revealed that math concepts are harder to comprehend in English, and if the children are to learn math, it must be through their mother tongue (no action has been taken since the release of these results… surprise surprise).

We also learned that passing grade for most subjects is between 35%-50%, whereas in the US it is 70%. Now rethink the last paragraph where only 9% are passing when they only need to score 35% correct on the exam...oy vey, we've got a problem here! And speaking of exams, we noticed a really interesting fact about their exams: in South Africa, they more often then not, refer to exams as "assessment instruments" rather than "test." The power of language at work here, right? These terms give off completely different expectations. "Test" implies that you are being tested to see if you are good enough...it is a judgment. While "assessment instrument" is more of a look at where are you at in the process of mastering the subject. Now, think about what these two terms do to a child’s self-esteem...no wonder American students are so stressed out!! Just ask any of my grad school friends and we'll tell you that school stresses us out! :)

Now that you’ve contemplated these highly profound education disparities...you must be asking yourself “where’s the sex part?!?!” You’re in luck! In a National Inquirer-esque article we read that the some of the tribes are taking action against HIV/AIDS by giving circumcisions. Seriously?!?! This is going to protect you from getting HIV/AIDS? We didn’t believe it! However, Ayla told Marion about the article and we found out that it actually decreases one’s chance of acquiring HIV/AIDS by 35%!!! Who knew that the Jews had it right all along?!?!

In other news: these kids were fascinated by our freckles!! It was like they've never seen freckles before (and actually, maybe they haven't?)...in fact, one kid scanned my entire body investigating my freckles. She'd point to them, squeeze it like it was a zit, and then laugh when nothing happened. And then, they discovered Ayla’s tattoos and tired to rip her clothing off to see the whole thing! It was hilarious because they kept asking Ayla if her tattoos were “so"...it took us a million years to finally understand that they were actually saying “sore.”