Education in Liberia

"Dr. Benjamin Wehye, President of LICOSESS College of Education recently returned home from Zambia with his PhD earned in Education after five years of what he termed as “intensive online research based and solution development study,” accompanied by in-person seminars." What does he say about Liberia's well-known problems with education?

raised concerns about Liberia’s seriousness to break away from the 1860s educational philosophy which he said was centered around exclusively educating children of freed and repatriated slaves and neglecting back then, the native residents who laid the foundation for the country that is today known as Liberia. ...

Once a slave, the mindset becomes narrow and restricted to thinking that freedom is yet too far away. This is why they train their children in the same fashion, making them believe that a certain class of people does not deserve the opportunity to rise to certain levels.

Exactly what from the 1860's educational philosophy remains in the Liberian system today isn't specified. Nor is it clear what the limited educational opportunities a century ago (native tribes didn't get a lot of schools) has to do with all 25,000 applicants failing the entrance exam a few years ago: that's the descendants of the native tribes, of the "Congo" people, and of the Americos -- none passed.

If things are still pretty much as they were when I was there, problems include low salaries, unreliable payment of same, poor oversight, and low prestige for teachers--if you have an education, you want a better government job than mere teacher. There was also the problem of school fees that not all families could afford, though I gather there's been some effort to find the money in the budget to deal with that. (No doubt much will go astray.)

Rhetoric about historical offences seems unlikely to address those issues. For that matter, if this report about the LICOSESS Gbarnga school closing is a guide, the good Dr. Wehye has some housekeeping at home to take care of: "allegedly using course guides instead of a complete curriculum for its B-certificate program in Gbarnga".

If LICOSESS does what it's advertised to, that will help. They've graduated quite a few teachers already from several campuses--the important things are simple. Train teachers, and remember to pay them.

Throwing Away and Wasting

Jesus warned that we might have to throw some things away, in fact, give up everything. True, this can translate to treasure in heaven, but in the meantime things seem to be lost.

Though one hopes that gifts to the poor aren't lost, not infrequently they're squandered, and any value will have to be supernatural. Ordinary wealth can and does vanish and benefit nobody--and may be wasted.

But in a few passages something else seems to show up. After feeding the multitudes, Jesus says to gather up the leftovers so nothing will be lost. After the Resurrection, He asks seven of the disciples to haul in a load of fish, even though he already has fish and bread waiting for them.

He seems not to want things He provides wasted. Which is encouraging.

The internet

I wonder what Dr Boli has been reading lately. FWIW, some of my scratch paper notes have become blog posts. And other things.

Special Days

The city calendar hanging beside me has almost every day flagged as some "Day": Bison Day, World Freedom Day, Fast Food Day, Craft Jerky Day, Cake Day, and World Hello Day. "Cookie Cutter Day" has another, unmentioned, name this year: the start of Advent.

At least they got Christmas Eve et al on there.

Subverting the Patriarchy

The Catholics and Southern Baptists (I'm a bit more familiar with the latter) are held as exemplars of patriarchy, which is understood to be a bad thing™(*).

Catholic devotions are famously Mary-centric, even more so than the Orthodox. (Rosary, anyone?) The Southern Baptist liturgical year celebrates the lives of Annie Armstrong (Easter) and Lottie Moon (Christmas) and their determination to serve God no matter what ossified patriarchs got in their way. I see an interesting contrast between alleged "know your place" teaching, and teaching "be like these women who overcame the people who wanted them to stay in their place."

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Any form of organization is subject to corruption and misuse, but why patriarchy should be uniquely bad isn't clear. If Darwin's rule is any guide, approximately patriarchal societies seem to be very successful. (Is it still a patriarchy if men run some aspects of society and women rule others?)

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Dan McBride wrote

But when the church needs workers, they do not wrack their brains.
They go enlist a lady that the WMU has trained.
It surely is a good thing that the women enter in,
'Cause we'd all be in trouble if we left it to the men!

After 55 years, a different view

Early in high school I read the collection of Saki (Hector Hugh Munro). All at once, of course. He had wit and excellent twists in many of his short stories, some of which turn up in school readers. He was known for it.

I acquired a volume for our own kids later, and it gathered a bit of dust until recently. I found it on the coffee table, read here and there in it again, and concluded that one should limit his reading to one or two stories, and not try too many at once. In bulk (more than four or five), they depress. I got the impression that the author, or at least his favorite characters, didn't like women or children very much.

But in small doses:

A Poet praised the Evening Star,
Another praised the Parrot’s hue:
A Merchant praised his merchandise,
And he, at least, praised what he knew.

Conspiracy theories

They're all the rage, and I suppose they always have been. I run into claims about drug company this, or Monsanto that, or "October surprise" scheming -- and some of the old "Jews run the world" themes seem to be getting new life, and an ugly amount of influence.

I don't hear much chatter about QAnon anymore. The only place I heard much about it was media reports; outside of those I only know of one person who is/was into it, and I never met him. It never seemed to have any institutional support, unlike Kendi's conspiracy theory, which has a great deal. and is unusual, in that he posits an unconscious conspiracy

What gives a conspiracy theory cachet? Some critical mass of celebrities endorsing it? Tribal endorsement? Popularity great enough that nobody wants to say anything against it?

Unknown story of forgiveness

Judas wasn't going to explain his doings to anybody before the betrayal, and wasn't in a mood to afterwards, so from whence did the synoptic gospels get the information about the "chief priests and officers" and the silver?

Acts 6:7 says that "a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith." If one of those chief priests was among the converted, what a story he must have had! Just like Paul, he was certain he was on the side of the angels, though using rather disreputable means, and then -- oh oh.

Maybe it was one of the officers. There probably weren't a lot of people in on the secret, though.

A reflection on the rhetoric before and after

"a curious disease which they have all caught--an inability to disbelieve advertisements"

C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress

Garden fork

I learned about this item rather late in life: shovels and spades and snow shovels I learned about quickly, but this one escaped my notice. It turns out to be very useful when you need to break up the soil, especially when your better half plants bulbs--a shovel's wide slice dissects more of them than the few spikes of the garden fork.

A shovel also tends to bring dirt up more as clods, and so requires a little more work to break it up so you can stir in the fertilizer or whatever. A fork is also handy when you're trying to trace grass/mint/bindweed roots traveling sideways--you can figure out which way they're going and pull more of the root out.

However

A word to the wise: the garden forks we have (garage sale specials) don't have tops as flat as a shovel's (or even the example above) for planting your foot on to ram it into hard or rooty soil. Look for flat tops when you get one.

If you try to push the more rounded models with your foot, you'll force your muscles and tendons to work harder to try to hold your foot straight and not turn sideways. You may not notice your mistake until the next day, but you'll notice. It's been a week, and whatever the tendon is attached to the tibia medial malleolus is still sore to the touch.