What if I want to go to University? (Written Feb 21)

Many Gambians want to go to Europe or America to go to university (many also want to go because they think life will so much better and easier in America or Europe. The thought is if you make it to America or Europe you will never have to worry about anything again). There is one Gambian in particular who we met when we first came to The Gambia who until the other day we thought would be perfectly qualified for university (he is intelligent, motivated, spoke good English, has good grades, and isinvolved with the Scouts group in his village in a leadership role). However, yesterday I noticed a minor problem. Math. He is about to graduate from the Gambian equivalent of high school and has been asking us questions about graphs. This a topic that will be on his final exam in one month, but he has not been taught anything about graphs. The final exam is called the WAS (West Africa something something) and is the standardized test that all students graduating from high school in English speaking West Africa must pass if they want to go to university in Africa. It also functions, we think, as a graduation certificate. As we were discussing graphs I noticed several other basic math concepts (exponents, algebra, etc.) that he just did not know. This is not because he is stupid or unmotivated. It is because he was never taught them. Imagine trying to take the SATs without knowing what exponents are or much about algebra. It won't work well at all. After some further investigation it turns out that math and science education are a significant weakness in The Gambia. There are few teachers who are skilled at teaching these subjects and often if a teacher is not good at a subject he/she will just quickly gloss over it and not really teach the subject. Unfortunately that makes it really hard to be accepted to and succeed in a western university. Sad.