Math Camp III - Girls

Before we get back going on math camp, lets do a little review of where we've been, since it's been about a month since we started. In math camp part one we talked about the logistics of our times table competition and ended with the shocker that, with over 40 kids in the competition, only 8 of them managed to memorize their multiplication table.

In math camp part two we talked about a few reasons why nobody bothered, revolving around the main idea that people here tend to give up at everything when things turn difficult, they also think that getting 50% done is grounds for achieving a reward. I mentioned how Celso came up to me cursing because he came up one set of numbers short and that was grounds for earning the reward. The problem is also having people that a trained to seek rewards in the short term. We tell kids everyday the two things that will change their lives are Jesus, number one, and education second. I wrote that many of the kids “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.”

However, those are only about half of the reasons. Actually, they're exactly 50% of the reasons. The other reasons are the girls.

Yes, the girls...

They are so complicated (understatement of a lifetime) that they get a whole post dedicated just to them. I'm constantly having to remember that we're taking a long term outlook and (barring God's grace) change in a person doesn't happen overnight all the time. Even in a matter of months, it can be hard to see somebody's change of perspective on education (or friends, or drugs, or God, or anything). People that have kids already know this. You don't just say, “You need to do better in school.” and the next day it starts happening.

Where the story of math camp continues is that after Celso left my house complaining about not getting his shorts, I encountered a cadre of girls to complain on behalf of Tercia. They were saying that Tercia (16 years old) should receive the reward also because she was the best girl to finish, having recited up until her sevens. The competition was up to 12, remember. After finally getting the girls to admit that Tercia failed and quit, they tried to reason with me (read: shout) by saying that girls just aren't as good as boys. Before I let them set a dangerous precedent I quelled their anti-feminist crusade and sent them on their way.

Oh, the girls...

While you could say they are a product of their environment and mostly have not seen great examples of education or success in their families, the thing you cannot say is that they have been given low standard. Our expectations and hopes for what the girls (and boys)can accomplish are very high. What's even more remarkable is how much of the girls here get higher grades than our boys (although that will make great sense once I explain why). Much of that though is rooted in how the system works. The girls will readily admit that they don't understand much of anything that they're learning and therefore give up more easily. In reality, often times after just one bad test or a confusing lecture they refuse to keep fighting with the subject and give up first, causing them to backslide even more.

What the girls have learned to do is skip class, avoid doing homework or required reading. All they need to do is ask to see the work of a boy or two that had done the assignment, clean it up a bit, cross their t's and dot their i's with hearts, and get a better grade. They've become so good at this that there is only one boy in the orphanage that consistently gets better grades than the girls. That would be Manuel, who finished the multiplication tables on the first day, and he gets straight A's. Manuel has decided to not give the girls his work to copy because it is unjust. It a problem that pervades the culture of much of the city, not just girls that happen to wind up here.

The girls are earning a counterfeit education.

“Wow, TJ. Don't you think you're being a little hard on the girls? They're just doing what they need to to get by.” No, I don't think I'm being too hard on them. I don't stand for any of this. The people that are doing the work for themselves don't stand for any of this. The problem is that cheating is not part of the culture here. Cheating is the culture. A few month back Victor was preaching in church and there was this exchange. It was a sermon about living as a new creation and getting rid of the old sinful things in our life.

Victor: And Jesus doesn't want us to do things that will destroy our lives.

Congregation: Amen.

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to drink until we pass out.

Congregation: Amen!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to steal from our neighbors.

Congregation: Amen!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to fall into temptation and cheat on our husbands when they our in the field working.

Men: AMEN!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us out until the sun comes up looking for prostitutes and abandoning our wives.

Women: AMEN!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to cheat in school.

Congregation: huh?

Victor: I said Jesus doesn't want us to cheat in school. Its a sin and its wrong.

Congregation: Umm...no its not.

Victor: Yes it is. You're stealing knowledge that is not your own and lying to you teacher saying it is yours.

The sermon ended pretty abruptly after that as THE CONGREGATION SHOUTED DOWN VICTOR UNTIL HE STOPPED! It was remarkable. I've never seen anything like it. The only way you could have made a group of people angrier is by showing up and your home-school co-op meeting and reading your book report on Harry Potter. It was that outrageous. People did NOT want to hear that cheating in school is a sin.

I'm not going to say the girls are the only people that cheat. There's a fair amount of cheating among the boys too, the difference is the boys will usually put in a good amount of effort exhausting themselves first before taking somebody else's answer. They at least try to get from point A to point B before copying the answers. The girls? They aren't aware that point A exists, they just want to get right to the end.

Yep, the girls...

We do study hall every night after dinner. Its mandatory. The girls (particularly anybody in 8^th grade or higher) have an extreme fear that I will see them flat out copying somebody else's work or assignment and then tear it up. One day I had a particularly tense fight with of the oldest girls here that revolved around the fact I had no right to tear up her work something-something-something and cheating is not wrong blah-blah-blah. She loudly announced to everybody that I was wrong and she was going to have the last word and copy the assignment again and was going to turn it in. Unfortunately for her, my pride, getting the better of me, wouldn't allow her to have the last word. I found her backpack before she went to school and wrote in pen across her assignment, “Dear Teacher, I want you to know that I am lying to you. This is not my work and I stole it from somebody to else. You may give me the grade I deserve. Thanks.” She didn't discover it till she got to school and returned to tell Marta, another staff member, what I had done. Once Marta stopped laughing she told the girl cheating was wrong.

Some of you are no doubt complaining that I'm really hurting the kids by not letting them turn if plagiarized work or that I'm making mountains out of molehills by making so much out of a multiplication table competition. The math camp itself, like many of my other social experiments around here, wasn't the point I was making to them. There are lots people that don't know how to multiply. Multiplying is probably not the most important skill they learn in school. My mom doesn't know how to multiply. The difference is she's a librarian and it doesn't come into play that often. She has yet to tell me a story that involves somebody walking in with a book saying, “I really like this one, but I think I'd like it twice as much if the Dewey Decimal was twice as big. Can you help me with that.” I'm sure at some point in history somebody has said that, but because my mom does not work in the same neighborhood as Jeff Foxworthy I'm sure she'll NEVER hear that.

The point is that folk here, especially the girls, have found a system that works not because it is a shortcut. It allows them to both give up when things get hard and still come close to actually succeeded by copying the work, which in their minds is the same thing as if they had actually done if for themselves. It is an uphill battle. It is an uphill battle on an icy slope with a giant cliff at the bottom that has major consequences.

What is worse is the absolute honest shock when anyone (girls or boys) fail a test or course or grade. And for the kids here that have failed, almost all the time they chalk it up to bad luck and the next year exhibit no extra effort or overwhelming desire to succeed at all costs, they just think that this year they DESERVE a passing grade after having failed the previous year. Its a big change, and some of the kids here really try hard and do an amazing job, even kids that are not as gifted at schooling or learning. But for many, when the going gets tough, they just find someone else to go in their place.

Of the girls, Tercia made it up through their sevens, and another girl made it up to here sixes. The two youngest girls in the competion, Mena and Ofeita, had a lot of fun practicing with each other and finished on their twos only after spending over a week trying to memorize their threes. The rest of them? Didn't even try. Not one of them. Didn't even approach me with a question. There was even a rumor for most of the competition that the winners would go to the coastal resort town of Pemba with me for a week. That didn't even motivate them.

At this point, at the end of our story, I usually coin some well thought out, elegant reason as to why the girls continue to display total apathy towards the system, but I don't have one. I should at least include some smart, well-crafted plan of action for how we're going to motivate the girls to get a work ethic and take the reins of their own future, but there isn't one.

Cause, you know, girls...