2008-09-11
A war on people by other means
One of the students in a Master Course that Jette Steensen and I organised in Maputo, Mozambique, for 42 teacher educators at colleges during the period 2002 - 2005, continued to communicate with me and has since then told the following story about the latest reform of Teacher Education in Mozambique.
After 10 years of errors and 10 more years of discussions without end the World Bank has taken the lead and succeeded last year to impose a reform, in fact against the whole educational establishment, who has no possibility to oppose the reform, because as usual the WB and IMF "suggestions" are conditions for the much needed loans.
Teacher education for Primary (grade 1 to grade 7) will be taught at a single new type of college replacing the former Center for Education of Primary School Teachers (CFPP for grade 1 to 4 ) and the former Institutes for Primary School Teachers (IMAP for grade 5-7). The strong international NGO Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) working within the teacher education colleges has been invited to follow the lead.
The admission of students will be from grade 10. The duration of the course will be one year. That year the students will acquireincreased mastery of the school subjects, the didactics of the school subjects, the psycho-pedagogical professional education, the practice periods at an annexed school, plus all the special themes like AIDS/HIV, Civics and Morals.
The new curriculum is according to its rhetoric on paper, like we have experienced it in Ethiopia, a conglomerate of all the progressive ideas proposed the last 25 years including action research, learners research, innovation, synthesis of theory and practice etc. Nothing is lacking. Only that nobody knows how this will be incorporated within one year. However, at the end of the day this is not so mysterious, because it always ends with extremely detailed technical instructions of what to do in all situations.
After one year the candidates start teaching all over the country. A carefully selected group will be offered in-service programs for one more year during leisure time, locally. This in-service training is called semi-presential and will also be taught by the same colleges. The candidates who have completed EVEM the in-service program will still not receive a degree of any sort.
Primary school teachers are thus still educated outside the tertiary structure. The colleges have no relation to either the Pedagogical University or the Faculty of Education at the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, and do not offer diplomas or degrees. This is really de-professionalisation instead of professional development.
The same type of “efficiency measures” have also started at the Pedagogical University, which before was teaching a 3 year course leading to a Bachelor inEducation, preparing teachers for grades 8-10, and a 5 year course preparing for the so called licentiate, that is to say a Masters for teaching grades 11-12.
The Bachelor course is now reduced to 12+1 year initial training and 3 years semi-presential in-service and the Master course will probably be reduced to 12+2 initial training and 3 in-service years.
The Faculty of Education has a Masters in Education of 2 years, on top of a 3 years Bachelor degree, which is not related to teacher education.
The basic idea is thus that teacher education is a purely practical training, which only can be achieved in the field by doing it. Hence the pivotal role of 1 college year + 1 year with periods of in-service if one is selected and the province/district has the logistics and the money.
The very idea that the mission of the colleges is to create educated persons mastering an analytical and critical understanding of a society and its education, hence able to participate in a democratic organisation of society and schooling; and the idea that this necessitates a certain distance to practice and established society seems completely eradicated.
Even though it is true that practice is not learnt at a college or a university but on the spot or on the job, it does not mean that one can organise a training that is pure management and skip the distanced critical and theoretical mastery of one's society and one's education system through at least some studies of related disciplines. The teachers must not only know more but also different from what they are supposed to deliver if the learners shall know more as well. For that purpose student teachers shall for some time leave the field and develop a different outlook. The new WB sponsored curriculum says at least 200 times that we need a reflective practitioner, but there is no such thing like reflecting by solely doing, as reflection needs some distanced and foundational knowledge that can help us to develop our situational understanding as many of the factors influencing educational practice have their origin outside the classroom.
The interesting thing for me is also the way the World Bank ideas are combined with former Portuguese ideas. That is to say: the subject matter (maths, sciences etc) is scientific, academic and theoretical, the methodology/pedagogy is professional and practical. But what matters on the primary level is only the practical.
The Minister of education pretends in his presentation that this order is a temporary one in order to cope with the shortage of teachers, to achieve “Education for All” before 2010/2015, and to cope with the economic resources of Mozambique. But the Minister does not even try to hide that this new teacher education has come to stay for a very long time.
The idea that teacher education in Mozambique is too expensive is proven by the well known World Bank argument that the monthly salary of a teacher with an IMAP diploma (10+2) represents 10 times the Mozambique Gross National Product per capita, which is a higher proportion of the Gross National Product than for example the salary of a basic school teacher in Denmark.
I have many times said: Yes, so what? Denmark has everything and does not really know what to do with the money (saving money at the cost of the unemployed at any rate, but that is a different issue), while Mozambique has to build up everything from scratch with outside assistance as 60% of the state budget for education is already paid by AID. Therefore the important question is not about money, it is: Does Mozambique need people with an education or not? If needed one has to find the money as it is of no use to create a school system that is a simulacrum - an empty shell - where people do notlearn, because the teachers are not educated and the money available is used for other purposes. The point is not that nobody wants to pay; the point is that the WB wants to decrease public sector spending and to lower cost for education, and hence for labour, and make possible a higher profit rate for capital.
When the World Bank launched the campaign Education for All at Jomtien, Thailand in 1990, it was in order to oblige the state and civil society to assume the responsibility for finding compensations for the consequences of the more important campaign of Structural Adjustment, which they knew would substantially decrease spending for education and teacher salaries.
I have tried to present these facts with examples from Mozambique, because the same move is at work in most African countries. The important thing is to discover the basic pattern behind the very diverse appearances in order to confront this move, a move which is a war on people by other means.
Staf Callewaert