Education in Benin/Political Philosophy in America

I was inspired to write this after having a terribly difficult class. To give some background in my training for teaching, I was trained to speak French to live successfully in Benin, but I teach in English only. This has been a problem for my cinqieme class. Last year, in their first English class they were taught how to speak English with their professor speaking French and Adja. My question is: How do you learn a new language by speaking two completely different ones? The answer is, he said a phrase in English, they repeated, then he explained it in Adja and French.

I don’t want to come off negative, but in my eyes this shows a serious underlying problem with the education system here. A passing grade here is a 50%, and everything is out of twenty, so a ten out of twenty on an exam is passing. These are all averaged out at the end of the year, so a student who receives a 15 in one class 8s in the others can still get a 10 overall and pass. Is this aiming low? Or is it a cultural difference I haven’t quite grasped yet?

My class that inspired this post was angry that I spoke only English in class. They have four hours of English class each week, and six hours of French. I am happy to say that I could speak French in my class exclusively, but what does that even out to? Ten hours of French? And how many of English?

Even more difficult is grappling with how to discipline a class when I have made a commitment to speak English, which they don’t understand. Other professors in Benin hit their students, although I haven’t seen this at my school, and Peace Corps Volunteers do not. So Volunteers have to be more creative than most with controlling their classes. For example, when my class is acting up, I stop teaching. I will wait as long as it takes. I know someone who waited an hour and a half.

Aside from that, Volunteers, especially those new to teaching like myself, have to realize that discipline problems are more a reflection on the teacher than the student. Although I have only been reviewing the basic material from their previous English class so far, they don’t understand any of it. They spent their last English class speaking French and Adja and don’t know how to hear English. So now I have to spend time re-teaching everything they should have already learned. The cold reality for me is that I need to be teaching things that they will be able to understand, which I so far have not, and my classroom discipline has suffered as a result. The students here are intelligent, but have suffered from a system where 50% is enough to get through, and sometimes less than that.

More difficulties are apparent in the ratio of girls to boys in school. Ecole primaire, or elementary school, is free for girls in Benin, but the next high school equivalent costs around 10,000 CFA each year, which is around twenty dollars. Most families cannot afford this, and the girls are the ones whose education will be ignored. There are plenty more boys than girls at most schools. As far as I can tell, this ratio isn’t as bad at my school because I am in a bit of a bigger village. Still, when I go to the market after my classes, there are always school-age girls selling things with their Mamas, and very few boys doing the same.

The kids that do make it to school buy cahiers, or notebooks. None of the students have textbooks. The teacher’s job here is to present a textbook on the chalkboard, and have the kids copy charts and examples into their notebooks. Hopefully the end result will be enough when they go back to study for their exams. The professors use a text called Document d’Accompagnement, which is published by the government. They are riddled with errors and not very thorough. Peace Corps has been revamping them each year, making what changes can be made in a forum with other teachers in Benin. They are steadily getting better and the freshly printed ones are leaps and bounds beyond the previous, from what I can tell.

I’ve inherited an English club from a Volunteer I’m replacing, conveniently named Eric, shout out! I have a couple of ideas for the club so far. Most of the kids who have approached me about it so far are in Terminal or Primiaire, and speak English very well. I’m really excited about their enthusiasm. I want to have things for them to read and engage with, but having enough books sent is too difficult to consider. I’ve thought about newspapers, to split them up into groups in our English club meetings to read and present the articles to the group. I’ve thought about giving weekly assignments using Wikipedia entries and our world map painting. Perhaps assigning a group of students to present on a country and giving them a Wikipedia entry that I could pick out. Somewhere they wouldn’t normally think about, and it could help improve their knowledge of the world as all the groups presented. There are also games that we could play, like scrabble or mad libs. Just some thoughts.

After talking with another volunteer, I noticed that a major problem in Benin is the belief that memorizing will lead to understanding. For instance, in class, many Beninese teachers will have students copy rules, copy examples, and copy texts, but the connection between the words and their meaning is never bridged. This caused me to think a lot about the education system in the United States, specifically in regards to grammar. Grammar has been eliminated from most, if not all, public school curriculums. The idea being that speaking the language enough will result in an understanding of the grammar involved. I am not one to say whether it works for all or any or none. But I know it didn’t work for me until I had to start teaching those grammar principles in Benin.

The problem is that in Benin and the U.S., oftentimes one material to be learned will be sacrificed to emphasize another, which is supposed to result in the grasping of both, in the same way that Adja and French equals English.

A friend gave me an example of the memorizing tactic here. Her friend was studying for her French class and asked for help. My friend agreed and asked what the problem was. The girl said she could not read or write, and needed to memorize a text her professor had given to show that she understood it. She memorized it, and was able to recite it to her professor, but the text made no more sense to her because of it. The words were still words she couldn’t read or write. She didn’t know what the words meant, but knew what they sounded like. Isn’t it the same thing in the U.S.? We can speak English, and use a very formulaic pattern to create meaning out of the sounds we make, but oftentimes can’t make the connection to why we use that formula, what it means to say words in that order.

English teach I Benin in. I can fix that sentence, we all could. But how many can explain the rules behind it? It may seem trivial to many people, but it’s the difference between memorizing and understanding. It’s the difference between saying something, and knowing what it means, being able to explain why it is that way, why it needs to be said that way. In case you’re wondering, there is a reason why I’m spending an inordinate amount of time explaining these things. I spoke to a friend back home in California the other night after she had had a conversation with two men who felt that Europe was socialist and America was great, so screw Europe, socialism sucks.

My question would be, Why does socialism suck? Why is America great? You find the same phenomenon here all the time. Beninese eople LOVE America. When I go to the market and speak French to vendors, they oftentimes think I’m European, and can be incredibly rude (I’ve yelled at a few people after they told me their opinions of me, the European). The second they find out that I’m American, the whole conversation changes, they’ll apologize profusely, ask me about America, tell me what they know about it, and who they’ve met whose been to America.

I played Pictionary in one of my classes, giving them important vocabulary and making them draw for the class. A few noteworthy ones: outer space, playing football, watching TV, drawing, and America. The student drawing America had so many ideas that he became overwhelmed by it. He drew a clean school, cars, and an American flag. Everyone in the class was excited about the America drawing. But why were they excited? Why did they love that picture so much? Why do they love America?

Another incident occurred when I visited the home of a professor at my school. He had a poster up in his living room that was meant to be America. It was a picture of a brand new, red sports car parked in front of a huge white and yellow mansion surrounded by flowers and crisp, clean-cut grass. That was the way he saw America every morning in his living room: consumption, comfort, excess, the ability to buy things that he did not need but wanted. That is something that is found here at times, but on a much smaller scale. Is that why?

People ask me to take them to America. Some volunteers get marriage proposals from individuals and their family, asking to be taken back to America. No one can quite explain to me what it is about America that they love.

This is what I thought of when I heard about Europe and Europeans sucking, and America rocking. What is it about America that rocks so apparently hard? The things I’ve missed most so far have been running water and fast food, and while that COULD be it, I doubt it. The only conclusion I’ve reached so far has been the difference between memorizing and understanding. I can memorize the sounds of the words, “Socialism sucks, socialism has failed, America is the greatest nation that God ever put on this great Earth.” But what does it mean?? The fact that someone memorizes how to say “Socialism sucks, Africa is doomed, Je m’appelle Erik” doesn’t mean they know what it means, or whether they said something correct or not. It’s a reason to avoid the answer to the question, Why isn’t America great? If all your professor wants to hear is you reciting something, what’s the incentive to do more than that?

I have an activity I play with my class sometimes, where I ask them what it means to wash clothes. I have notecards with pictures drawn on them of people playing soccer, washing clothes, reading, etc. I hold them up one at a time and ask whether or not each one is washing clothes. The class all repeats “no,” “no,” “no,” “yes!” It’s a simple exercise, but the fact that they can recognize that it is a picture of someone washing clothes goes a long way to them understanding it. Then I’ll ask if it’s a boy or a girl. What is the boy doing, “He is washing clothes.” So now their understanding has moved from recognizing what washing clothes is, to understanding how to express it when I ask a question that does not have “washing” in it at all. It may seem like a trivial victory, but that’s my work here, the difference between memorizing an understanding: Asking questions differently to understand an answer from multiple angles.


The main issue I want to address here is this difference between memorizing and understanding. This idea that America is great, which people here can’t quite articulate to me. Can Americans? I can’t.

I would encourage you, when you recognize someone memorizing a line like, “America is great!” to ask them, Why? Tell them that there are thousands of people who think America is Shangri La, the land of milk and honey, and cloud 9 all wrapped up in whipped cream, baked until the neighbors can smell, with a cherry on top, left on the windowsill to cool, but just out of reach for everyone but you. Ask them why that is, and then ask them if it’s because socialism sucks, if it’s because America just rocks, because everyone else sucks, because we know the difference between memorizing and under understanding. Ask if it’s because of anything good that America has done for them, or just because people look for something, anything, that can be good, and memorize the line, “America is great,” just like everyone else, and say it enough that people accept it as fact.

There are people out there who love America, and I want to know exactly why that is.

Moving on, if anyone could send me a French press and some good coffee (*hint hint Oregon friends who don’t have stumps for hands and can package things effectively with their fingers from their town to mine), that would be amazing. I already broke the small French press I brought with me. Sorry, Michelle.

Since I was asked recently, I wanted to include some local African salutations. The question was, How do you say ‘what’s up in Adja?’

In Benin, one of the most common greetings, what’s up status, is, Bonjour, tu t’es bien reveille? (I think that’s spelled right). It basically just means, Hey, start your day well?

In Aja, phonetically, (thanks Eric and Sheena) it’s, È fon nyide à?

In Fon, phonetically to the layman named Erik, it’s É fon gandji à?

I hope this post doesn't come off too negatively. These are just some thoughts that have been floating around in my head while I do nothing at post. Hope you're all doing well!!