Saturday, 18 October 1986: My Teaching Challenges at the University of Botswana

Gaborone, Botswana

My quantitative methods class for first year environmental science majors continues to be a challenge.  Some of my 76 students are catching on okay while others seem to have little mathematical perception and reasoning ability.  They can add, subtract, multiply, and divide although a few even have problems with simple math.  Anything more complicated gets some of them totally confused.  So I put examples on the blackboard, then give them exercises which follow the same steps as the examples with the numbers changed.  

For example, yesterday in the practical session, I had them do a statistical problem.  It involved a census of an imaginary African village with 37 households having 1 to 15 people per household.  I gave them a graph on which I had plotted the number of people per house and showing the number of houses that had that number of people living in them.  They had to figure out the total population of the village, the mean number of people living in each house, the standard deviation of the mean, and several other related items.  I made sure that the mean came out to a whole number in order to make the standard deviation calculations easy. 

Late in the session, two guys came to me for help.  They couldn’t even figure out how to tabulate the data to come up with the mean despite the fact that we have been working with means for about three weeks.  I resorted to pictures on the blackboard.  “Look, if you have 5 houses and 2 people live in each house, how many people live in those 5 houses?"

First student:  “How can you multiply houses times people and get an answer in people?

Second student:  “You mean there are two people who own five houses?”

The examples in their textbook, Data Description and Presentation by P. Davis (published in the UK), are way too complicated for this bunch, so I try to give them material that is much more basic.  Department Chair, John Cooke, warned me to keep it simple and so I do.  I’m beginning to see what he meant.  Still, at least 10 of the students have a 90% average so far.  

Part of the problem is the students’ English and mine.  They are not used to American accents, and English is their second language anyway.  They speak Setswana at home and to each other, but have been taught everything in English since about age 10 or 12 depending on where in the country they grew up.  It is my understanding that all of our students get a free university education but there is a catch.  After graduation from secondary school, they must help with the country’s teacher shortage by teaching at a primary school in a village for a year before they can attend the university.  So they are living in a village where they only hear Setswana spoken and teach in Setswana as well.  Therefore, by the time they get here, their English is rusty from lack of use.  Suddenly, they are thrown into an environment where all their classes are in English (except Setswana and foreign language classes, of course).  I’m told that the university has a very intensive English program for these first-year students so by the time they graduate, most of them can handle the language very well. 

But why do some of them have poor mathematical skills?  Don’t give me that racist crap about black people being intellectually inferior.  From what I’ve learned about Botswana, there are two reasons.  First of all, the culture is not mathematically oriented.  For example, if you ask a cattle rancher here with a large herd how many head he has, he won’t be able to give you a number.  However, if some of his cows are within a group of other cows, he can identify which are his by facial markings, etc. without having to look at a brand on their rump or a tag in their ear.  So it appears to me that people here think more qualitatively than quantitatively. 

The second reason has to do with the educational system which is not up to snuff particularly in rural areas.  The government is currently making great strides in improving primary and secondary education.  Instead of pumping diamond mining revenues into an army, they are spending it on health care and education.  Right now there are some 200 new junior secondary schools under construction in the country to assist in the implementation of a new law requiring compulsory education until age 15.  Furthermore, Botswana still relies on an educational system inherited from the British who, at the request of the tribal chiefs who feared a takeover by the Boers, established a protectorate over what was then known as Bechuanaland in 1885.  The protectorate, allowing for self-government by the local chiefs, was maintained until independence in 1966.  During that time, the British opened schools and their system emphasized essay exams even in mathematics.  Students were expected to write essays explaining a mathematical process rather than just solving problems.

This system seems to have carried on even at the university.  When I learned that essay exams were the norm for my quantitative methods class, I told John Cooke (who is British) that I wanted to give the students problem solving exams to hone their math skills.  “Right,” he said.  “There is too much nonsense written here in essay exams.  Go ahead and give them problem solving exams.  I like that idea.”       

  

Four members of the Environmental Science Department faculty (left to right):  Susan Ringrose (Canada), Berneck Makwiti (Malawi), Masego Mmputakwane (Botswana), and Paul Shaw (U.K.)

 

Then there is the Geography of North America class for fourth year students which I started out with several lectures on the physical environment of the U.S. and Canada.  That put them to sleep fast.  Now that I’ve moved on to the cultural and social environment, they perk up from time to time.  I have previously written about our heated discussions concerning slavery and Native American reservations. 

Recently, one of the students took me on about Western water rights.  He thought that water rights based on “first appropriation” was grossly selfish, an example of how Americans are unwilling to share with others.  You can imagine the reaction I received when I pointed out that the Colorado River has hardly any water left in it when it reaches the Mexican border because of upstream appropriations.  I agreed that this is unjust.  However, I asked, “What would happen to all the poor blacks and Latinos living in Los Angeles if the water they currently get from the Colorado River were suddenly all diverted to Mexico?”  

What I’m trying to do is get them to consider alternatives and start to see the world in shades of grey instead of black and white (no racial pun intended).  I’m not selling them on the U.S. as a “good” country.  I simply want them to better understand its contradictions.  This kind of critical thinking seems lost on a couple of them who like to spout socialist/anti-capitalist rhetoric.  I suppose living so close to South Africa has influenced them to see capitalism as evil.

In addition to these two classes, I help out with one of the remote sensing classes.  For example, during a recent practical exercise, I showed students how to use stereoscopes to examine pairs of aerial photographs in three dimensions.  It’s a skill I picked up nearly 20 years ago as an undergraduate geology major at Ohio State University.  I love seeing the topography “pop out” of the photos although one gets tired eyes after too much of it. 

Boikhutso and Keanole, two department technicians, working in our soils lab.

  

The Environmental Science Department was originally a Geography Department but John Cooke wisely decided several years ago that they could get more funding with the “environmental” label.  It appears to have been a good decision as several of the staff are now involved with environmental projects related to the Okavango Delta in northwestern Botswana and the Kalahari.  For example, Dr. Susan Ringrose, a Canadian born in England, is analyzing land degradation and desertification in Botswana using LANDSAT satellite imagery.  Recent droughts and overgrazing by cattle have really buggered up the landscape in much of this country.

The Environmental Science staff includes three Africans (from Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Botswana), two Brits, one British-Canadian, and one American (me).  There are also several local technicians.  It’s an interesting and very harmonious group presided over by 62-year-old John Cooke with his snow white hair, shaggy moustache, wire rim glasses, hiking shorts, and big smile (when he’s not dealing with the administration, that is).  Apparently, the administration isn’t all that bad relative to other African universities.