This afternoon as I flipped through my ‘emergency lesson plans’ for 7th and 8th grade Social Studies, I couldn’t help but keep an interested eye on the World Cup qualifying match between Egypt and Zambia. I figured that if Egypt could eek out an undeserved victory and keep their slim qualification hopes alive, then maybe tomorrow I could have something to replace the daily ‘icebreaker’ segment of my curriculum. So far in Egypt, I’ve learned that you can never stick to your original plan. I completed these pre-formatted emergency lesson templates last weekend, when the possibility of more swine flu related school delays still loomed. While the first week of school has now come and gone, uncertainty still hovers. The last I heard, the third and fourth weeks may be canceled, and here is where my send-home emergency lesson plans and worksheets – basically any resources I can get my hands on without, god forbid, troubling the school for supplies – come into play. I have dealt now with two Egyptian schools, one in Alexandria and my present school here in Cairo. Both experiences have been impacted by the Egyptian government’s response to the swine flu threat. While the chaos and uncertainty caused my first set of plans to fall through, it has allowed me to slip seamlessly into another teaching position when schools in the rest of the world have been in session for over a month. Spending this last week with my teaching colleagues, a blend of mostly Egyptians and some Americans and Canadians, I’ve been weaned off the all-too rational questioning of why on earth the government’s swine flu policy makes any sense. There’s no real use in asking ‘why’. Our school is only 5 years old, and many of the faculty – even the foreigners – are young teaching mercenaries who have already been around the block of the Egyptian education system. It seems our role as educators is damage control: to fill in the gaps, the missed weeks and the wildly different levels of English proficiency of students placed in the same grade. What concerns me the most is the general culture that pervades the whole educational establishment itself, from the government to the parents down to the students. For now I’m leaving the schools themselves out of this equation, but I will know very soon how culpable they are for the shocking apathy that greets the new school year. In the meantime, I can say that teachers were working at my school all summer, preparing for the students’ uncertain arrival. I want to know how parents and public servants, those supposedly investing themselves in the future generation of the country, can possibly contemplate a whole year without school. From what I heard at my school, this was a distinct possibility. Slowly, in the week that preceded the first day of classes, parents trickled in to pay for and reserve copies of textbooks for their children. Those whose parents mustered the initiative to come in will have glossy, new, recently edited textbooks. But what of the other half who, entering the second week, still don’t have books? I can fill in the gaps by drawing a map on the dry erase board, but I am no cartographer, and it really amounts to plugging a finger in the dyke. And the apathy trickles down through the generations. My principal, who seems a man quite committed to the school and to the children, said that my students would understand the practical, real-world importance of Social Studies. He contrasted it with Computer class, where kids just don’t get the point. This, I thought, should raise an immediate red flag, if students can’t appreciate computers in the 21st century. Sadly, I’m not sure how many do get the point of Social Studies, either. When I call on the ‘icebreaker’ at the beginning of the 1st period class, and I ask ‘why is the job of geographers important’, I’m not surprised to be greeted by groans and wayward stares. This is middle school after all. But the truth is that no one can answer the question, and that the concept of ‘critical thinking’ is entirely anathema to them. In actuality, there is no ice to break since they are all completely at ease in the classroom. If I really wanted to elicit some conversation, I’d better try soccer instead. BM
