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Teaching Computer Science in Africa
by Kalle Viiri
Tanzania is, from the Finnish point of view, a very strange country. It's got a diverse culture that borrows heavily from traditions of the local tribes as well as the European cultures that held the African nation as a colony. A Tanzanian values teamwork, authority of elders and tradition, but their academic culture has many unsavory aspects as well. Half a year ago, I was there, teaching programming, witnessing the local university education in person.
I had been warned about "African time", or the tendency of African cultures to not respect punctuality as much as European cultures. However, this turned out to be a relatively minor issue. From the very first day, I had difficulty keeping track of the organizational structure of Tumaini University. People were moving between towns, the leadership posts were being passed around like trophies, and of the numerous meetings and conferences held at the University, almost all were about lesser matters such as appropriate dressing for students and teachers. Josephat Oroma, who taught the programming courses with me, was of great help, although I was unable to reach him too most of the time, including the first three weeks of the course.
What troubled me the most during my stay in Tanzania was that despite English being the official teaching language in Tumaini University, many of my students had no understanding of the language whatsoever and just nodded and muttered "yes, yes" when I said anything, as they have been trained to do since childhood. Another big issue was that a large amount of lectures wound up canceled: I was informed that a teacher can skip classes with little risk of being penalized in any way. According to other people working at Tumaini University, not learning a thing during a course is not a problem as students who pay their tuition fees are given easier exams until they pass, essentially making Tumaini University a degree mill.
Even three months after the trip, I am a bit baffled by the fact that they actually tolerate such academic culture. In Finland, I couldn't even imagine paying for education and then only getting a certificate for passing the course, without getting proper education. Such universities are like parasites: they feed on tuition fees and grants but produce only worthless degrees and a false sense of learning. Sure, there are many teachers at Tumaini who are genuinely concerned about the learning of their students, but they seemed awfully busy to me - I guess they have to bear the workload of many lazier teachers as well. I was told that the issue is further amplified by brain leak - skilled, hardworking and honest teachers are at a demand and get much better wages in the big universities of Dar es Salaam than in the small universities like Tumaini.
The problems with the Tanzanian system become pronounced when we compare it to our own education. Our very own programming MOOC has started in English. The material looks very nice, and it covers a wide range of topics from the very basics to object oriented programming and some useful algorithms like binary search and selection sort. This is what the students of Helsinki University, even those with no prior programming knowledge, learn during the first half of their basic programming courses. In comparison, the students of Tumaini had to spend most of their second programming course getting a hang on the basics, even though most of the course's official topics are the same as on our course! I shared the course material with the students of the Java course as well as Mr. Oroma, and I hope they find it useful for developing their own courses further.
During my final weeks in Tanzania, people began to ask when I would come back to teach them more. That's a tricky question: I enjoyed many things in Tanzania, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't do any real good there. Their educational system needs to be reformed from the very foundations: as long as the students don't know the official teaching language, are taught to not ask questions and are administrated by people who don't have a clue about what's going on, I can't fix the fact that the education doesn't work. It is up to the Tanzanians themselves to decide what they want from their universities and how they will make it work.
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Kalle's blog:
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kviiri/2012/10/11/first-day-at-tumain/
photo from: http://www.volunteerafrica.com
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