I’m kind of tired right now and glad that I’m not a school teacher permanently. I missed my adult TEFL students from all over the world today…!
I spoke to a lot of the school kids today and just realized again how difficult it must be for them to try and learn English and compete with the rest of the world for a decent job of any kind. They just don’t have basic human needs.
Water, they have to walk some distance away from home to fetch it, some further than others. Electricity, roughly estimated I’d say 99% of families here don’t have electricity. So no TV, Dvd players, fridges, computers, Hi Fi’s, ipods, only the odd battery operated radio. The roads are bad and a lot of people live where there aren’t even any roads. Hardly anyone have cars. Things we take for granted growing up in the western world, like libraries. Imagine your childhood without even a book in any language! A few of them can afford to buy an English magazine now and then. Can you imagine how these kids are supposed to complete any project? The kids in the city simply google everything…
The only opportunity for learning English is their English class in school, taught by a local Xhosa teacher, whose pronunciation and general use of English is probably not even up to scratch. But then all our English teachers go off to Taiwan, South Korea and China, cause the money is so good. But our own people are completely neglected.
I wish the government would start by at least putting up one library within reach of a couple of schools, so that everyone can get to a library even if they have to take a taxi to get there. Later they can start with computer and internet centers. I wish I had the business skills to put up something like that!
Okay that’s all I wanted to say for today thanks.
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