USSR

Come on, show me some sign that you're serious about education.  USSR was over when I was two. 

I just saved 753819752 hours of labor

Writing report cards is a bitch without a computer.

Grading itself is an extremely laborious task, but transforming exam results to individual report card is even worse.  Due to its immense work, it was completely neglected back in 2009.  In other words, the parents did not get their children's report cards.

Having participated in this week-long exercise, I knew even some knowledge of the computer will help.  I was given the task to fill out report cards from last year, so I put some daydreaming into action.  If you are wondering now in the middle of the school term, it is because the Form II students' national examination results were not posted until early 2011. 

The task would have been easier on Java or Matlab, but I don't know Java, and I didn't want to install 2GB of Matlab just for this purpose, so I turned to the more pedestrian Excel.  From here on it's a bit technical, so you should read on only if you are teaching at a secondary school in Tanzania, suffering from similar forms of inefficiency, or bored.

So this is the report card for my school.  As you see the "zoezi" is the average of weekly tests and the mid-term exams, and the "jaribio" is the final exam. Then they are added, and averaged.  "Maoni" means comments, ranging from very bad to very good.  The sections with 1-11 on the right are character assessments, which is where students are arbitrarily judged on their cleanliness, morality, and ability to answer dumb questions.  They're also ranked within the class, the rest below are comments from the teacher, what the students owes the school, and other stuff like that.

 

This is the "zoezi" section.  I got the results from the Academic Office, and inputted all the data points manually.

This is the similar "jaribio" section, also manuallly inputted data.

 This is the bs character assessment, also manually inputted.

With the information on the previous three, and some excel functions, most of the imformation will be automatically filled in after writing in the name of the student.  There are some parts of this section that needs some manual inputting as well, but they're quite minor.

I want to share this with as many people as possible, so if you're interested I'll email you the file.

Corporal Punishment 2

A year ago I never thought I'd turn into a corporal punisher.  I admit that I use the stick because my words aren't good enough to motivate my students to do their homework.  Some who oppose corporal punishment in Sabasaba say "it doesn't work," "the ones who get lashed are used to it," and "i just talk to them."

Well, it works, and the result is INCREDIBLE.  A lot more students are doing their homework just because they fear the violence I would inflict on them.  Sure they copy each others' work, and sure only three weeks in the semester there are daily culprits.  Well, what I'm seeing is better than last year, and it's not like I have a miracle whip. 

I also have a lot of fun out of it by teasing those who give me lame excuses and those who try to dodge in a funny manner.  I usually hit them on the hand so sometimes it looks like they're dancing like MJ as they dodge.  I hit pretty hard, but the pain doesn't last too long.  I've been hit before in '96 when corporal punishment was legal and widespread in Korea.  For about three months I managed to avoid the violence, but afterwards I was borderline regular / occasional, and I began to feel less pain.  Thus, based on this extremely biased experience, I don't feel guilty when I hit them.

I feel bad for teachers in developed countries who can't use corporal punishment, how do they motivate bad students?

Sabasaba Secondary School

This post is designed to make my blog come out in the first page of google when searching "sabasaba secondary."

It doesn't work.

UPDATE: IT WORKS!

The Sachs - Easterly Debate

This one's dedicated to two of my dear friends who have walked similar paths of TCK, Macalester Academics, and awesomeness as I did, KabCity and ADT.

I wonder if Sachs and Easterly really hate each other.  Sachs is up in Columbia, while Easterly is in NYU.  They have different opinions on their visions of development, and was quite open about their disagreements publicly via book reviews / rebuttals / etc.  I'm not quite aware of the full extent of the debate, as I don't have a crush on either one of them.  What is similar though, is that they are authors with serious Economic backgrounds, making their books quite dull and overly reliant on statistics - i.e. hey I did this regression and it shows that i'm correct, disregarding the reliability of the measurement, the direction of casuality, blablhallbstuffstatisticsnerdsliketotalkaboutblabh.

Ah, I digress, the joy of writing without a coherent outline.  Though problematic in its parsimony, I'd like to present this debate using the metaphor of a tractor.

1. Jeff works in the development industry, and upon a survey of a dirt poor village, claims that what those people need is an awesome tractor.  Upon return, he pulls out all these population statistics all over the world, uses various ratios to find out how many tractors are needed to save the world, finds out that it's about three times more than what the rich countries spend on ODA, and then holds hands with Bono to yell "we can do this."

2. William works in the development industry, and upon a survey, sees that tractors are used as playgrounds.  In another case, he sees a farmer who learned how important a tractor is, took up loans, bought a tractor, used it for a while, fixed it a couple of times, and managed a living. 

I would describe Sachs' approach as detached materialism.  His vision of development clearly focuses on material goods - buildings, products, tractors, and most importantly, capital.  He often ignores the role of people, institutions, outsiders, governments, culture and other non-material entities, as if the reason for poverty is what is most visibly evident - the lack of material goods.

Sachs' approach is also detaced, much like a scientist experimenting on his subjects.  The scientist, the observer, is not part of the project, not accountable to the results of the petri dish, and partially deaf to what the petri dish is saying.  This is quite evident in the various Millenium Village Projects, the product of Sachs' visions.  The website boats its efficiency and cost-effective measures, but it never mentions how many UNDP staff are employed - possibly millions in wages, insurance, air fare, living stipend, education stipend, etc, compared to the peanuts spent in the village.

Easterly envisions development to be integrated to the economy.  The economy endures and continues.  Material goods are part of the economy, but so are maintenance, sellers, advertisers, and regulators.  More importantly, it also includes concepts such as incentive, long-term planning, personal investment/effort, and ownership.

Much reptition has been made on the Sachs - Easterly Debate.  It's its first appearance on the Tomzanian, so I give the score:

Sachs 0 - 1 Easterly.

I am unfair with the use of imagery, but so is my commentary.

The Fourth Wave??? Thoughts on Egypt Mainly, but Tunisia, Ivory Coast, and China as Well

I considered writing about the Sachs-Easterly debate, but then my attention was diverted to Egypt.  Normally, I wouldn't write about what's going on at another corner of the world on the tomzanian, but recent events have been too exciting to contain.  Unfortunately, my growing addiction to the Internet has decreased my attention span in reading materials, and has also damaged my essay writing abilities.  Thus, I present my thoughts in the most common form of writing in the Internet: headings with paragraphs.

The Fourth Wave of Democracy

In his seminal work, Third Wave of Democracy, Samuel Huntington remarks that the 80s and early 90s was a remarkable time when former authoritarian regimes democratized one after another, much like dominoes falling.  There were two sides of the domino effect.  One was the neighbor syndrome, where democratic revolutions in one Eastern European country affected another.  The other was the somewhat inexplicable phenomenon that failed to explain why countries so far away from each other (think Hungary to the Philippines to South Africa) democratized within such a small time frame.

The latter half of the 90s and the 2000s was disappointing for the global democratic movement.  While the rise of Internet and Social Media (fb, twitter, and the somewhat annoying “i-reports”) has empowered the public, authoritarian states have been firm in their grip on power.  Dictators of pseudo-democracies in Africa have endured, Malaysia is becoming a model of how to have elections and maintain authoritarianism, and the Middle Kingdom has gained both stability and legitimacy.  Thailand, once remarked by a renowned academic that it would never regress back to its past authoritarian form, did just that.

The Fourth Wave seems to be happening in the Arab world.  Although it’s only in its infant stages, I have hopes that it grows into regime changes and political adjustments.  What has started as an angry college grad reacting to his humiliations from police harassment, has spread to what we now see in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen as well.  If I call this the neighbor effect that was observable in the Third Wave, I would call Ivory Coast as the inexplicable simultaneous democratization happening at far away countries.  The concerted effort to uphold the results of the ultimate election in Ivory Coast, along with the events in North Africa, shows that perhaps the 2010s will be a decade of democratization.  Uganda, DR Congo, and many other weak democracies are holding elections this year, and elections are often a springboard of democratic movement with a spike in civic concern and conversation.  On the other end of the world, Myanmar and Thailand’s leaders are facing internal pressures that are both constant and unpredictable in their intensity.

Something that not even the West wants 

The Korean government has volunteers in both Tunisia and Egypt, and I often wonder if their respective offices have ordered evacuations yet, and how much they must be cussing the protests for disrupting their work.  If regime change occurred in Egypt, the relationships foreign governments have with the bureaucratic counterparts may dissolve, which is an undesirable outcome in an employer’s point of view.  This brings me to the second point, a protest for democracy in its escalated revolutionary form, is something that not even the West wants.  Since the beginning of governments, democratic regimes have worked with authoritarian counterparts in all matters of politics: defense, trade, etc.  As noted by the BBC, Egypt’s stability is an important factor in for US foreign policy in the area.  Its proximity to the Palestine-Israel region and Sudan, as well as its cooperation on a host of Middle East issues, have made Egypt an important foreign policy counterpart whose regime type mattered little.  Further instability provoked by the protests might yield an unpredictable future regime, possibly anti-American, and even if Mubarak stays power, stronger authoritarian grips on people’s rights, and a shock in oil prices may result.  The West’s reluctance towards democratic movements is not new.  During the Third Wave, the West’s support for democratization amounted to a couple of statements by high level politicians, while internal communications were filled with concerns of uncertainty. 

Unison amongst cacophony

People, skeptics usually, would say “yes, but…” to the positive congratulatory reactions to the democratic movement.  To an extent, such voices of cynicism need to be heard, as they are often challenges that the democratic movement face to legitimize itself.  One of the “yes, but…” is that the protests are not a concerted voice for democracy, and they rather involve a number of demands and reasons that are not necessarily shared by everyone in the streets.  The man who was the ignited Tunisia burned himself out of humiliation and unemployment.  Other grievances include the rising food prices.  Amongst protesters in Egypt, opponents of ElBaradei may be present as well, considering him to be just another blood sucking power hungry politician.  Yet, amongst the cacophony, the unison is the desire for more democracy.  I use the relative term “more” for democracy, because I believe democracy should be conceptualized continually, where several factors contribute to determining the extent of a democracy.  This conceptualization is important because simplifying democracy as a dichotomy (whether a regime is a democracy or not) brings out simple minded fallacies.  For example, a skeptic with a dichotomist view of democracy would comment that there are many different voices in the protest, some asking for economic improvements, and not a concerted the voice for Mubarak to step down and for Egypt to hold democratic elections for the President and the Parliament.   I, with a continuous view of democracy on the other hand, opine that all the grievances call for more democracy, one in which people’s voices are better heard and reflected, and this not only involves elections, but also the freedom of civic activity, including assembly, association, press,  expression, religion, criticism, etc. 

The endurance of a democracy

The Orwellian measures Mubarak is imposing – the cuts in telecommunications, the deployment of military, and the targeting of reporters – exemplifies how authoritarian regimes are susceptible to protests, or large scale demonstrations of public grievances.  Protests happen at economically developed and democratically consolidated countries as well: take a look at the US during the 2008 Republican National Convention and Korea during the 2008 I-hate-US-beef protests.  While controversies were abundant and political entities took a massive hit, democracies endured because 1. no ridiculous Orwell-Mubarakian measures were imposed, 2. governments had no reason to fear regime change, and 3. governments reflected on not only the public grievances, but how they dealt with the protests.  An authoritarian regime like China with strict controls may endure, especially coupled with efficient state led economic growth, but it doesn’t compare with the endurance of a healthy democracy.

And lastly, what the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) must be thinking

I would like to end this longest Tomzanian post ever by reflecting on what the CCP must be thinking.  22 years after what happened in Beijing, the world is a different place.  Back in 2005, anti-Japanese protests in China were organized thanks to the cell phone text messages.  Now in 2011, we can add social media to sms.  Despite the Great Firewall of China, censorship to blogspot, facebook, and the word “freedom,” the Chinese people will use the Internet (somehow) to mobilize.  And if 1989 were to happen again today, there’ll be so much more red unless the CCP is thinking of something special as they watch the events unfold in Egypt on television today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after the day after tomorrow, the day after ….

Bureau de Exchange

Bureau de Exchange

Money changers are an intrgral part of an expat life in a developing world.  We foreigners are often paid in dollars, and a lot of the economic transactions are in dollars as well.  Thus, these money changers are quite common, except for small towns like Mtwara. 

Hmmm, that was a sub-par intro.  Let me try again.

HEY WANNA HEAR A FUN STORY???

1. One morning, Steven came up to me, mildly happy. He pulls out a one Euro coin, and flashes it to me.  You'd think he would be bragging "yo teach, check out my euro."  But I know Steven, his smile read "yo I want shillings for this, and I know that you could do the job for me." 

He found the Euro in the pocket of jeans he bought at a second hand market.  I checked online and one Euro is approximately 2000 Shilings, the price of the jeans.  I congratulated him on his good fortune, and performed the transaction.


2. THE SAME DAY, Mr. Prosper shows me some green bucks.  Korean bucks, that is.  He too found them in the pants that he bought in the Moshi second hand market.  Although he bought them for a high price of 6000 Shilings, he made a killer profit.  His 36000 Won was equivalent to 48000 Shilings, which I duly performed the transaction.  He was so happy that he bought sodas for everyone in the staff office at the time.