School and Classes in Botswana: At the Halfway Point

Well the title of this post may be just a tad misleading as I am actually just past the mid point but that isn’t terribly important. One of the most common questions I get from friends and family at home is “How are the classes?” I almost always give a different answer because it isn’t so easy to just pin down “how they are.” Each class is different and as the semester has progressed each class has taken on a life of its own.
Some of things they have in common include that 80% is an A. Justification for grades is a luxury generally with held and punctuality is very important for the students, and not at all for the lecturers.
Population Studies: Population Policy of Botswana.
If I had to choose one I would say this class is the most like a normal class at K but I would do so hesitantly. The Teacher, Mr. Dintwa, is very young and doesn’t control the class well it has never gotten out of control, but the organization and structure of the class simply leave something to be desired. He is never late if you take into account the fact that at the beginning of the course we decided that the class would always start ten minutes late. His lectures are at best, lacking. Generally he gets up in front of the class and reads his note word for word which the students in turn write down word for word. He almost always repeats himself 4 or 5 times on every sentence so everyone in the class can copy his words. This whole process gets very irritating for me, because I refuse to copy his words verbatim.
So far in the class we have had two assessments. One was a group project made up of a presentation and a paper. The other was the midterm exam. The group project was awful. It was me and a group of 4 other Motswana (I am the only international in the class). We met three times and every meeting went for 4-6 hours. We accomplished nearly nothing until finally I asked if I could type and finished the project with little to no consultation of my group mates. The fact of the matter is that Motswana are not educated in the same way as I was so the work they are trying to do is hard for them and easy for me and they seemingly don’t care to try. After the paper was submitted (after me single-handedly editing it) we received an 84%, much better than expected and much better than most any other group. The exam, though I had no idea what to expect, was in fact quite good. It was just a single essay question on a topic we had discussed in class. I got the exam back and I received an 86% again a grade I was pleased with but there were no comments on the paper except “Well done Mr. Turner.” I feel that if it was too good to warrant comments than perhaps I should have gotten a 100% but I am not prepared to fight about it, as long as I get good grades.
Archaeology of Botswana
This is the class I was most excited for but it hasn’t been everything I hoped. The teacher is fine other than the second week of the class when he tried to change the time of the class before being told by the registrar that it was unfair to change course times after schedules had been finalized. Most of the course has been made up of group presentation. The class was divided into 10 groups and each group was to present a chapter of the text book. The assignment was unclearly defined, all we knew was that we were supposed to review the chapter and present for about 45 minutes. After each group presents the teacher opens it up and allows the class to suggest what they should get. Most times the class recommends something between a 65 and 75% and usually the teacher awards between a 68 and 76. There is however no justification for these grades, or at least it would seem. He almost never tells the group how they could improve or what they failed to accomplish. My group was the first decent group (the two before us were terrible) and were awarded a 80%. My group members seemed thrilled with the grade but again I wondered why not better than 80% if he had nothing bad to say. I asked a friend what the deal was and he recommended I not go to the teacher and ask why I had gotten the grade I did, he said that’s just how it is, and I guess it doesn’t surprise me why would the teachers be accountable in this area. I have discovered that this teacher refuses to give really good grades although he has no reason to do so. The teacher has not lectured barely at all because of these presentations. The other assignment in the class was a paper about a piece of legislation called the “Monuments and relics act of 2001.” We were supposed to review it and suggest ways to improve it. After turning it one month into the year it was finally returned more than 7 weeks later. The teacher announced that there were only two A’s a 86% and an 80%, not good odds and I was nervous as this was my first archaeology class and I was surrounded by archaeology majors. As it turned out I received the highest grade in the class, which made me wonder why I was more capable than all of these fourth year archaeology students. Again no comments on the paper but I was too thrilled to care.
Sociology: Social Problems in Southern Africa.
This is without a doubt my strangest class and perhaps my most rewarding class. I say that because every lecture, without fail, is interrupted in the middle by a 25-30 minute discussion about social problems in Souther Africa. Generally these discussions turn into the teacher telling the class what’s wrong with their culture (He is one of them but he ignores that fact.) Teen pregnancy, Aids, Small Houses and adultery (two issues I’ll discuss at more length in a later post), Zimbabwe, Batswana being lazy, Rape, Crime, the South African political system, and many other things are among his favorite topics. These discussions are fascinating though because when the other students comment it gives me an idea of how they think and feel. For example, on one occasion the issue of marital rape, normal rape, and statutory rape came up. The Teacher asked “Is there such a thing as marital rape?” The general consensus among the class was that, “Once a woman is married her body is her husbands and if she denies him than he should go to a prostitute or get a divorce.” All of the western students (I am the only white male in the class but there are many “White People” in the class) voiced our opinion that a women’s body is always her own even after marriage. Then the teacher said, “Can a women rape a man?” This time was that “A man can’t say no, men always want sex so he can’t be raped.” I didn’t even notice that I was shaking my head so violently but the teacher asked me what I thought and I stated that there were concepts such as statutory rape and that men have the same capability to say no as a women and could be raped just the same. All the European and American girls in the class later came up to me and congratulated me on having the courage to say that out loud, but I could not keep quite but the whole experience was great for learning about the values of Batswana and learning that those values are not homogenous.
When it came time to have an exam in this class a friend warned me that, “Mr. Ntau’s tests are impossible. Make sure you know the names, titles, and dates of all the books he talks about.” That comment made me very nervous after all I have never considered that the most important part of a class. When I saw the test I realized she had been right and I realized that common sense could have gotten me a 75% on the first day of class. Most of the questions were more a matter of deciphering than knowing what the right answer was. The whole test took me 8 minutes and I was thrilled to have it over with.
Economics of Southern Africa and Botswana
Since I am giving each class a distinction this class would have to be my most disappointing so far. I was really excited to study about the economics of Botswana since Economics is a subject I love. The class is team taught by two teachers, one the first half the other the second half and the second teacher has just begun teaching so my thoughts here are only on the first teacher.
This class has been the really strange. For about a week in the class we went over a slide show that was about 15 slides at a pace of about 2 slides per day. The teacher would put up the slide and tell us what it said, all the while telling us not to write and just to listen, but everyone wrote anyways. Then he would ask if we were with him every couple seconds. After he finished reading the slide he would give us 5-10 minutes to copy down the slide all the while telling us that the power point was online so we shouldn’t copy it down. We copied it anyway. Then he would recap the slide before moving to the next one. None of these lectures were more than 20 minutes in length. After that week class was cancelled at least once a week usually twice and when we did have class generally the teacher would give us a hand out, read every word of it aloud and then let us go after about 10 minutes. Finally by the 6th week of the semester the teacher said he was done teaching and that class would resume after the short break, I was a little upset because I felt I hadn’t even learned anything.
During this time we had one assignment. A paper between 3 and 5 pages about one of the topics on the slide show, economic development theories. This was the first paper I had submitted at UB and I just assumed that the guidelines were similar ot at K but I didn’t know for sure and did make some mistakes, for example, I learned after I turned it in that everything here needs a cover page. Honestly, the paper I submitted was sub-par and I had no idea how it would be scored. I received a 15.5/20 which in my opinion may have been generous but again there were almost no comments on the whole paper except that it was missing a conclusion, something, had there been a clear assignment, that I would have not forgotten.
Setswana
Setswana is the only class that is everything I expected it to be. It is just like a normal language class anywhere. I enjoy it but I wish it was a one hour class instead of two. I feel I am learning but not fast enough and I never really speak in Setswana and after I leave, I know I never will again which is disappointing. For the mid-term in Setswana I studied very hard and it was just as I expected. I got a 94% (second highest in the class). I was very pleased but as always language is very hard for me and I am only learning very slowly but the teacher is wonderful and I am enjoying it.

To sum it all up, I told someone the other day, the classes are challenging but the expectations are so low that really, school is quite easy. Overall, my classes get in the way of me having more fun but I am learning about Botswana and I can’t say they are worthless, I don’t believe they are. I think I am doing well overall and as along as I keep it up I can allow myself to have fun and still succeed in school.
That’s all for now,
Love to all,
Tommy