Schools here

In class today, we were discussing schools. As you might imagine, education, or the lack of it, is a big problem here. To the government's credit, they are trying, but they really don't have the money to do anything substantial. Abdul Summit told me that many kids are just now getting textbooks, and there's only 2 months left in the school year. There are some teachers in some of the more far flung provinces that claim they have not gotten paid in a year. My text book claims that there are schools that have over 150 students in a class! It's one thing to sit through micro 101 in a lecture hall, it's quite another to try to keep the attention of 150 16 year olds, let alone 7 year olds...

In the places that do have working school systems, a big big problem continues to be kids dropping out. Most of the time it is to work. Girls are the most vulnerable to this, they are often drafted to help the mother with all of the chores and/or take care of younger siblings. A rather novel approach to combating this is to offer poor families food. It has apparently worked pretty well in keeping girls in school longer. The literacy rate among women is around 25%.

My teacher was quite surprised to learn that religion is not taught in public schools in America. That lead to a brief description of our constitution and a word about private schools and voucher programs. I always feel like the ungrateful American whenever I discuss a so called short coming in our country. The Yemenis would kill for our dysfunctional school system. I guess it's nice having high standards, and it's even nicer being able reach them sometimes.

آلي آلعكة

Isaac

Yemen middle east