The Edjurist - Information on School and Educational Law

As many of you probably know Zimbabwe has been in the news lately for their recent disputed elections. Today we learn it has the possibility to get violent. You may also know that Zimbabwe was one of the most literate countries in Africa at over 90% literacy rates and by all accounts it had a sparkling education system. Anyway, this is all background for a story in today's LA Times about how Zimbabwe's education system is being dismantled as one by one inflation is forcing teachers out of the education system.

The first to go was the English teacher. Six months later, the commerce
teacher followed. The next year, 2005, the trickle turned into an
exodus. By 2007, the departures from Mufakose 3 High School were like
bricks in a collapsing building: math, science, accounting and many
other teachers, all leaving their careers behind to work as cleaners,
shop assistants, laborers in other countries.

Zimbabwe's education system, once the best in Africa, is being demolished teacher by teacher.

Some of the teachers at Mufakose 3, outside the capital, Harare, called
in sick and were never seen at the school again. Others didn't bother
to call and just disappeared.

"You'd come to school and someone's not there and next thing you
hear, he's gone," said Knox Sonopai, 43, a history teacher at Mufakose
3.

In 2007, 25,000 teachers fled the country, according to the Progressive
Teachers Union of Zimbabwe. In the first two months of this year, 8,000
more disappeared. A staggering 150,000 teaching vacancies can't be
filled. The Education Ministry sends out high school graduates with no
degree or experience to do the job.

...

At Mufakose 3, schoolboy Bernard Tinashe stared straight ahead with
dreamy eyes as he painted a 10-year-old's vision of someone in a white
coat curing the dying and the sick. He recited his hopes and dreams in
a singsong classroom voice, as if learned by rote.

"I-want-to-be-a-doctor-because-I-want-to-give-people-medicine-when-they're-sick.
Sometimes-they-don't-get-medicine-because-in-this-country-there's-no-medicine.
To-learn-is-the-best-thing-in-Zimbabwe-so-that-you-can-be-educated-so-that-you-can-
learn-something-that-you-can-do."

When there aren't enough teachers or there's a strike (a frequent
occurrence these days), children are sent home or spend the day outside
playing.

"School's boring," Bernard said, "because there are no teachers and we
don't learn anything. You just sit and read books but the teachers are
not there. Sometimes we are just sitting on the ground or sitting
waiting for our parents to come and get us and then we'll go home."

He said some of the children were mischievously delighted when classes
were canceled, but not him: "It makes me feel unhappy. I'll never get
to be educated. I'll never get to be a doctor. I'm not learning."

The education systems in these developing democracies are often forgotten amidst the stories on bloodshed and political power struggles, but we should remember that while these political games play out in the present, it is the future that is lost.

Kudos to the LA Times for pay attention and running the story.

Also today, NPR interviews Lisa Jackson who as a documentary which begins tonight on HBO (10 est) on the extensive rape and harassment of women in the Conflict in the Congo. Here is the trailer: