Make your own free website on
Multigrade teaching, gender and the community in Zambia
Learning ,education and development.


Multigrade teaching, gender and the community
Learning ,education and development.


DD Development is not the work of one man but of a nation, a tribe, a group, with man as the main actor,like the teacher is the main actor in his multigrade classroom. I can tell my whole life that my country has been much more developed than the developing countries where I worked in but development is relative to the region, to the people to the economic and social situation. Education is development and development is education. Any individual wants to be educated because it is the key to development.Multigrade teaching is part of this kind of development I learned a lot from teachers in Congo and Zambia, they learned me how to teach without essential teaching aids. You can learn a lot of theories on development and education and they have all their value but the most valuable theory is the one where individuls share experiene, knowledge, understanding, religion, technics... to move to a developed region, country,world.In a multigrade school you learn children to work and live for each other.A grade 3 pupil will learn from a grade 6 girl and vice versa.In a multigrade way of teaching you do not notice the difference between grades.That makes a school so special and exceptional.It is a school for and by the children where every child has the chance to evolve at his/her own pace.

A    As the experience in development bulked over the years my concept of development has changed and I hope in a positive way. In the eighties I was following the mind of a lot of Europeans that life was only good in the Northern regions. I had no idea how life could be in a developing country. Even on television they did not show those terrible pictures of hungry children and adults.My concept of development was changed completely once I started working as a development worker in Congo Kinshasa.In a positive way because my concept was rather negative because I was following the mind of about 90 percent of the Europeans. The idea of development was to help those poorblacks without giving up own privileges. Now that I was working in a bush village in the middle of the equator wood ,I saw that the population was very positive about the mputu (overseas Northern countries).They were ready to learn a lot about new teaching strategies or new agriculture strategies...They were really hungry to learn, so one my concept about development was changing...Now twenty years later the concept on how developing countries think about development changed obvious. Developing countries like Zambia are no those countries who are changing with the donors wind. They know what they want and which help they want. They dont see development aid as an isolated issue but as a part of the countrys policy in a sector wide approach.Give the responsibility of a project to whom it belongs.In a multigrade school every pupil and every teacher has his/her task.The all learn from each other, there is a mutual understanding of who is in charge and who has to obey.To feel good and to be accepted in such a society or such a school you need a good training as well as a good job.The more you are accepted in your environment the more you feel good. It is the same in school,when you have a lot of friends and you play a lot you will feel good as a child. So for me development is that you grow up in a safeand social environment.That you will receive a good schooling and training and that you are supported by your parents, your teacher, the school, the society, the government. When you have a salary you can buy things you like and it will make you feel good.When you have to struggle everyday to find a little money to feed your children, you will feel miserable and you will not develop neither the one you are educating.Why is there so much AIDS under teachers in Zambia and other African countries. Because the teacher is not feeling good, he feels abandoned by the government in terms of training,salary ...

Teachers have to feed also their children so they try to look for the money where they can find it, the parents, the children, the girls.At one hand they feel poor because they have a bad salary and they have no perspective at the other hand they feel superior so they can ask girls to sleep with them to have good points at school.If there salaries were better, if they were better trained and if the conditions of living were better they will feel better and the will develop more and think about the consequences.In this case I am not only talking about male teachers but also female teachers to have a bigger salary they sleep with anybody to get more money and as they are the most vulnerable in the AIDS pandemic they die first.When a country is economically well developed the changes are bigger that the people will be developed also. To develop a population you need good education for all and I am sure Multigrade Teaching can deliver this.When wealth is very well shared there will be a good development of the nation.

The economic situation of a country is decisive for the development of the country. When you have a good economy , you have welfare and people enjoy to live in that country.There will be less migration. But when the countries around you are poor and you are a strong economic power, those poorer countries will infect and affect the strong economic power. Look at the land issues in Zimbabwe, affecting the land issue in South Africa but also the economy of South Africa.

When welfare increases, development will increase also. Why third world countries have poor people because they dont have money. A teacher in Zambia is getting about 50 dollars per month but he has to pay four times more to nourish his family.How can you progress if you spend more then you get? Parents in remote areas can spend money on churches so why do they not spend more on education like building Multigrade Schools in their villages.We have done it in Zambia.Some regions are convinced that Multigrade education is helping the children but also the community.Some kids are learning to read their parents.These parents will contribute more to the education project and so development is a fact.

In t In the developing countries,Multigrade teaching is regarded as an effective means to provide services of teaching of quality in the rural zones, it play sa paramount part in the improvement of the access to primary education and in the maintenance of the educational services vis-a-vis to the budgetary constraints and the means limited as personnel.In the rural schools, teaching takes support on the experiment of the children and the analysis of their immediate environment and integrates a dimension of cultural identity naturally and takes part in the valorization of the medium. If the environment becomes resource for the school, often the school in its turn, thanks to the participation in its operation of the parents and the authorities of the local life, can revivify the cultural and social life of the community and become an engine of its development.If it seems established that the support granted by the administrators at the central level is essential with the correct operation of the multigrade school, it is by a policy of decentralized management that this one could be optimized. A rigorous planning can allow in particular that, as of the starting of the device, the formation is ensured, the material arrives at the establishments, the principals, the teachers and the agents forming part of the environment take part in operation.

Lastly the multigrade option offers a great potentiality of economies, in comparison with the recurring cost and capital costs. The capital costs are lower mainly because the multigrade school uses less classes (but larger) than the option monograde.