SELIBA SA BOITHUTO: THE IDEAS BEHIND IT
by Gerard Mathot
I decided to become a teacher when I found that I enjoyed giving private tuition, to earn some pocket money, as a university student. I was called mainly to help secondary school girls, who couldn’t do mathematics. I found the main reason of their troubles was not that mathematics was too difficult for them, but that they were afraid of it. I spent most of my time with them doing puzzles and playing with shapes and numbers, until they saw the fun of it and developed the confidence to solve problems for themselves. It is only later that I read the book: Mr. God, this is Anna, by Fynn, in which the young girl, Anna, enjoys playing with numbers, saying: "Numbers are the toys of God – you always find something interesting and they never get dirty."
I taught physics in Ghana and worked in teacher education in Lesotho. I have, therefore, visited many schools and watched many teachers at work. But I spent more time looking at the pupils than at the teachers, and I found that they were bored and often confused.
On the other hand, when you look at young children, before they have been to school, learning is playing and playing is learning. Children are naturally curious; they want to find out how and why things (and people) work. They are not afraid of failure; they just try it in some other way. If their mother tongue were taught at school, most children would not be able to speak it.
Isn’t it cruel to force naturally active kids to sit still and destroy their interests by putting everything in subject boxes and timetables?
Over the BBC I once heard a poem by a school child, which was appropriately called The Brown Rectangle. This referred to the desk, which symbolised the small, boring, brown space to which exciting discoveries were reduced. Nobody listened to the child, who then committed suicide!
In one of the schools I visited I saw written on the blackboard: "Study now, enjoy later," encouraging the pupils to work hard for their coming examinations. But would it not have been better if it had said instead: "Enjoy your study?"
As a teacher I liked helping people to discover something and to learn to think. There is nothing more beautiful than a child coming to you with shining eyes, saying: "See what I have found out!" I hated being a policeman and forcing people to be quiet and do things they were not interested in. That is why discipline is a problem in schools.
My conclusion was, therefore, that schools are bad places to learn and that they destroy the joy of learning. I thought it was criminal to force naturally active children to be bored in school.
I discovered that I was not alone in my pain about schools.
It always seems to happen that you find relevant information when you are ready for it. I started to discover many books expressing the same dissatisfaction, for example John Holt's How Children Fail:, which shows that they are afraid, bored and confused, Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society , showing that schooling is the new religion, with a hidden syllabus, and Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he contrasts banking and liberating knowledge.
Studying the history of schools I discovered that popular schooling only started in the 18th and 19th century at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Industry needed skilled and obedient workers, who would do their jobs well and cause no trouble. Either through the State or directly the owners of the industries would pay for the schools (so providing free schooling), decide their curricula and set up examination bodies to decide whether the students had learned enough to be employed. But the schools also had to instil discipline and obedience, for if they did not, school leavers might bring about disturbances in the workplace later. That is why in schools insubordination is still often punished more severely than failure to learn.
If education is guiding people beyond themselves then schools fail. They impose limits on learners. We have to start from where people are, what they are interested in and guide them to develop themselves. Guiding is not forcing, but exposing, offering and showing the way.
I learnt that this was possible from my experience in Ghana.
I started to look at my own learning history. I had been to a good Roman Catholic Primary School, a Secondary School run by Jesuits and the University of Amsterdam. I succeeded in my examinations, but basically I was bored. The things that were important to me, such as music and exploring my own environment (Amsterdam), happened when I was on my own, outside school.
School actually destroyed some of the fun of learning. I now have no pleasure in reading poetry, because a teacher once criticised my interpretation of a poem which I had liked very much.
Only after I finished my schooling, did real learning start. I reflected on my teaching and my experiences in life and found many things which I wanted to find out or do better in. I discovered that I loved learning new things, playing with and exploring new ideas, discussing my new knowledge with friends and so testing the validity of my learning.
I learned to use a computer on my own, for example, trying out, reading handbooks and having a friend to ask when I was stuck. I never attended any course on using computers. As long as there are resources and people to talk to, you can study on your own. Course outlines, timetables and examinations are unnecessary.
If we wish to help people to learn, we must base our approach on respect for the learner as a person, as an intelligent person, as a person who can make decisions about his own fate. I once met a teacher who said: "The day I stop learning from my pupils I will resign from teaching."
My friend Leuna Lechesa, who had listened to many of my complaints about schools and the difference between schooling and real education, then said to me: "Stop complaining, do something about it!" That is when we developed the idea for Seliba Sa Boithuto, a new centre for education.
Leuna and I were joined by a group of interested and committed friends, and together we discussed the principles on which Seliba Sa Boithuto should be based. This was the result:
Principles of Seliba Sa Boithuto:
* One of the main aims of life is to grow, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually:
• Nobody can grow for another; the individual himself must achieve this growth.
• This implies that it impossible to teach anybody (pouring knowledge into an empty head), but that learning is an activity of the learner.
• If learners are responsible for their own learning, they will have to learn to solve problems and think for themselves, and they will be better prepared for the unexpected events of life. In other words they will be self-reliant.
• Nevertheless, learners can be helped in this growth, as long as they are respected.
* Learners who are respected, will also be responsible for the organisation which tries to help them:
• Seliba Sa Boithuto should be democratic, owned by the learners.
• There should be decision-making meetings and the financial books should be open to all.
• The running costs should be covered by the contributions from the learners.
• Donors can be approached for capital expenditure, so that the learners’ contribution does not become a barrier to learning.
* Seliba Sa Boithuto is not a school:
• Schools are characterised by syllabi, prescribed courses, timetables, instruction and examinations.
• Learners may come whenever they like, study whatever they like, in whatever way they like and decide for themselves when they have learned sufficiently.
• There should be no entrance requirements: learners would find out soon enough, whether they were ready to deal with their studies.
• Learners could check their progress with tests with the answers provided.
• If learners wish to obtain certificates, they can register themselves as private candidates to any examination body.
The Initial Steering Committee registered Seliba Sa Boithuto as a non-denominational, non-political, non-profit-making society with these principles and its own Constitution.
The rest is history. For all of us it is great to see a dream come true.