Things get hard and people quit. Its just a fact. It's why New Year's resolutions sound great in January but come February you've forgotten all about it. It's why for the smoker every other cigarette is his last and the drinker always promises himself just one more. It's why people abandon Jesus as soon as he starts to tearing away the idols in their lives. Others give up before they get started because they're afraid of encountering difficulty (or failure). It's why that test will get studied for tomorrow. It's why a workaholic dad says he'll start spending time with his kids once they're older and can appreciate it more.
There's millions of examples of why people quit or don't even get started to ever have a chance to quit. Let's not even consider prospects of failure. I'm not talking about failure. A lot of times failure would be preferred over doing nothing.
I'm done pontificating for now. Lets get back to math camp. As you'll recall, we finished our multiplication table competition with exactly 8 kids completely memorizing all their numbers. Keep in mind that there's over 40 kids here that were capable of performing this task. I figured if the kid can count to one-hundred its totally doable to take an average of two or three days to memorize a set.
And now, as promised, I'll explain why so few kids achieved this herculean feat. (A good writer should never explain when he's being sarcastic, but I'm not a good writer and that last sentence is pretty dang sarcastic.)
I made the kids do their numbers in order so there was no skipping around and reciting your tens first. Like I alluded to before, a majority of the kids zoomed right through their times tables till they got to four. Up to this point, they could pretty much count by twos or threes to recite the table, but counting by fours took a little more concentration that they didn't have. Most struggled to memorize their fours for a day or two, and once they had that done there was no problem reciting their fives. After all, counting by fives is almost as easy as counting by twos or tens.
After a kid would reach his fives, something just clicked. Its like they had been satisfied with that and just stopped. They quit. Almost all of them. I think maybe one or two kids tried doing the sixes, failed, and just stopped at that. At this point the kids took a little longer to recite, often taking a day or two to study and failing the first several times they tried.
Like I said; when the going got tough, just stopped going. And they were content with that, stopping at their fives and not even trying the sixes. They justified it by saying the prize is probably a can of pop or a pat on the back or something inconsequential.
Some people will try to tell me that since they're only kids and I needed a bigger carrot to hang on the stick or you made the focus on the work when it needs to be on the reward. Or that it was too tough for them. I refuse to believe that by saying we had two second graders who got the prize and nobody older than eight grade wanted to be “bothered” with the silly contest. They're ones I was aiming it at. Remember those kids that didn't want to be bothered. They are major point number one.
So when it finally came time to collect our prize, I headed out with Manuel, Mauricio, Samito, Riquito, Victor, Dionisio, and Merecido. One had to do something the band that day and couldn't come. When I asked them what, as a group, they really wanted, they all responded with shorts. The kids have plenty of clothes, but unfortunately we don't always get to pick what gets donated. The last time a big donation came somebody (I think maybe World Concern) dropped off khakis and polos. They are the best dressed orphans I've ever seen (have I seen that many?) but don't have lots of options when it comes to playing around. So we decided some shorts would be well deserved accomplishing this mathematical feat. (By the way, those khakis and polos we got? There was over 100kg / 220lbs of them. Clothes are bought by weight here. Maybe someday I'll explain it...)
Anyhoo, of all the boys that gave up on their multiplication tables, only one of them made it past the fives. Celso made it all the way to eleven before throwing in the towel! He did his elevens and the next day tried once do his twelves, failed, and announced that he didn't feel like he needed more and he'd merited his award. I cautioned him against this thinking (he's about 14 years old) but he insisted on sitting idle the final two weeks without doing anything. TWO WEEKS he had to finish just his twelves and he didn't want to be bothered with trying. When the boys that won came back with their shorts, Celso proceeded to bang on my door and (angrily) ask where his shorts were. I calmly told him that the shorts were only for people that finished the contest. He (angrily) protested that he did and should get it. After lots of tricky wording about how eleven is not the same thing as twelve otherwise it would be called twelve and how there is no prize for people that failed, Celso (did I mention he was angry) slammed my door and said that he didn't want any shorts from this [expletive] competition anyways. Remember him. He is major point number two.
If you've been paying attention to the details, you'll notice that's there's lots of talk about boys. All the people that won the contest were boys. You might be asking yourself if the girls were prohibited from participating in math camp and if TJ is sexist. The answers are no for the former and only a little bit for the latter.
The short story is the girls didn't even try. Exactly two of them tried. One made it to the fours and the other to the sevens before giving up. And when I say tried, I mean even to count by twos they refused. They even accused me of trying to scam people. I asked them what the scam was and apparently I was making them better at math to make my job easier. Imagine that. Getting people to learn is suddenly a crime. Granted, the girls weren't in a great mood from all the boys making fun of them for knowing nothing. Remember the girls as the third major point. We'll cover that in the next installment.
I don't know if some of the things here describe all kids everywhere or just the ones I have here, but they certainly are emblematic of major behavioral patterns within the culture in Nampula. Here, I'm gonna try to be brief.
Main Point Number 1: Like the boys who did some of the table, people just quit when things get hard. Or, as is more common, they are looking to see if the reward is going to be worth all the effort. If they don't see it as some huge gain for them they're not going to do it. I know all these kids very, very well. For some reason there are several kids that have managed to get all the way to eighth grade being illiterate. And I don't mean functionally illiterate, I mean really illiterate. They've never seen or considered how reading will benefit them and they just learned to read until it got too difficult and quit there.
Honestly, it is hard to show them lots of examples of how working hard will get them somewhere in life, because so much of the system is bent against them that success stories are few and far between. I often try to tell people that work is its' own reward. It is a platitude I've heard hundreds of time, but unfortunately gets translated as “work rewards itself”, which is just confusing, or as “the reward of work is work”, which is just depressing if you really think about it.
Major Point Number 2: The other problem is that people think getting close is good enough. Celso had convinced himself he was getting the prize for finishing close and was shocked to find out he didn't. This is how they justify failure. They literally say they didn't fail, that they did it, just not all of it. This is a constant fight we have here all the time as we bring in people to do work here (fix the dents on the car, rewire our power box, build a security wall) and think that getting it close is okay and are offended when we want them to do a good job. Sometimes they'll leave without getting paid, refusing to finish a job until weeks later when they have no means and need the money.
When the kids' grades come out every-other month the group that has passing notes gets a coke with a big 'ole chicken dinner. That was great after the first trimester. Tons of kids got the prize. Then I said that for the second trimester you only got the prize if you had a C average with no F's. If you think people were angry when I told them they needed to raise their average from a D to a C you should have seen the vitriol when only 12 kids received the prize. The rest were upset because, in the school system, D is an average grade that 80% of the kids get. Complaints ranged from “My teacher says it's practically a C.” all the way to “It's good enough to pass, why isn't it good enough for you?” and even “Then I'm going to talk to my teacher to get him to raise my grade.”
Yah. Try telling you teacher to raise your grade on account of your guardian thinks you need to be doing better in school.
The point is, people like doing the minimum and think that failure is acceptable. When a kid is failing half his subjects, he thinks he's going to move up a grade at the end of the year because the other half of the subjects are passing. They may pass in a sissy-fied, over-emotionally protective American school where every child is a snowflake and needs to be loved and nurtured, but that doesn't work here where people fail in school. We try to set a very high standard for the kids here because we know an high level of education and good work ethic will be there best chance for finding a job. Sadly, many kids don't see it as unattainable, they see it as unnecessary.
Next time, get reason number three: Girls.
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