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After a very fun and colourful active workshop making prints, last week we held a very enjoyable session presenting all of our new work, playing Grandma’s footsteps and discussing as a class what, why and who is a community.

Presentation is a fundamental part of Making Art, Making Me, we present at the end of every workshop, even if it is just a few words. This is a great opportunity for the children to build key life skills and build their classroom confidence, it’s also a chance to reflect on their achievements, learn together and explore complex and sometimes sensitive topics.

We spent a couple of weeks developing these new works, and their starting point was to think about key moments or experiences in their life which has influenced or impacted who they are. In last week’s presentations it was noticeable that the context of their work had improved considerably. The analogies had become more in depth and intelligent than the previous self portrait presentations. In these, although not all (see Zulpha’s story) there was a tendency to stick to a this is Charles, he likes playing football, he likes learning maths at school,  and so on and so forth.

In this exercise I stressed for the groups to think beyond this patterned description, and about the reasons and inspirations behind their interests and subsequent printed stories.  For example, was there a particular time you can remember playing football which sparked this interest?  What do you like about playing; the competition, working as part of a team, winning!?

Last week at Singachini the presentations were excellent, coherent and engaging. We heard accounts of a young brave boy rescuing his friend from an angry dog and a girl visiting her Grandmother in hospital before she passed away. We also discovered how a school netball club was started on a Saturday, after all of the chores and cleaning was complete a group of them decided to have a match and have played ever since.  In this posts featured image you can see Gilbert presenting his work, in which he is sitting with his Uncle watching the news, a lasting impression on him.

Another important theme at Singachini was visiting the town, Festo remembered being sent into Moshi to do some shopping and Sarah had seen and admired a very large Church. This exposure to urban life featured in many of the prints and has been a key influence to many of the children in the rural communities. I would hope that our exhibition in Moshi at the end of the project will be another inspirational memory for them.

This week we will build on our previous discussions and start making sculptures which connect our identity with our communities. A community is a complex network of  social and economic support, MME believes that in order to productively grow and develop within them we must be aware and understand exactly why, what and who OUR community is.

We will be exploring these ideas creatively with clay over the next couple of weeks.

Below is some examples of last week’s Making Marks workshop, this was a great way to get the pupils thinking about how they can develop their own unique styles of art. These skills filtered into the next self portrait exercise where each child was asked to identify their individual characters within their drawings.

Teachers in the background are getting involed in Making Art, Making Me

Yesterday at Mgungani the Head Master, Mr Msofe joined our third workshop at Mgungani Primary School.

We had a jam packed afternoon with some lost ground to make up from last week, despite this the head teacher loved the workshop and I was really pleased to see that he even interjected at the end whilst we were setting some ‘homework’. We were asking them all to draw a picture of something that has happened in their life, good, bad, old or new, it doesn’t matter as long as it has had an impact on their identity and is important to them! As we were discussing this Mwalimu Msofe joined in and reminded the children that they are all individuals and therefore should think about unique stories. This was really fantastic to see the teacher getting involved with the project and put a massive smile on our sustainable face!  We spoke with him afterwards and he reassured us that we are welcome anytime and can see that the children are learning new skills. He especially liked the presentations, our favourite part too, where each child presents what they have done to the group. He says that this is building their confidence and they can use these skills to express themselves in the classroom and in their exams.

Karibu sana Mwalimu Msofe

You are very welcome!

In last week’s workshops, the very sensitive and controversial subject of corporal punishment surfaced in many of the drawings. The pupils commented that the children in their pictures were either sad or angry because they had been scolded by the teachers. This cross over between these different feelings ‘she is angry because she is sad’ immediately suggests wrongdoing – anger should not be a product of sadness unless there has been an injustice.

When observing a maths lesson in a primary school last week, a member of Childreach Internationals staff observed a trainee teacher writing equations on the board and repeatedly caning after every wrong answer.  By the end of the lesson there were tears in every child’s eyes. This was a trainee.

Around 2005 the Ministry of Education in Tanzania set out new legal guidelines which stipulated the conditions and reasons why a child is to be caned, for behavioural discipline not learning difficulties.  This was a result of secondary school children starting councils and confiding in teachers and parents.  Finally, after enough complaints had been made about the constant, severe and inappropriate use of corporal punishment conducted by teachers, the Ministry of Education recognised that disciplinary councils should be set up in schools to designate the new ‘motivational punishments’. An example of this could be working in the library or planting a tree and ensuring it grows. This will enable students to recognise and learn from their mistakes rather than fearing them.  Caning is then only to be used in conjunction with a suspension and letter home explaining the behavioural disobedience.

This all sounds fantastic progress on paper but the reality, as shown above, is that these councils are only in place in the more fortunate secondary schools. Caning is still extremely prevalent  and constantly used as a socially excepted teaching strategy, to correct mistakes without explaining the answers.  In rural primary schools where children are unaware of their rights they are disempowered and much more vulnerable to violence. How are children supposed to learn, as opposed to being ‘taught’ if they are not able to understand and reflect on their mistakes.  I asked Lorna Yoyo, Childreach International’s Programme Manager to comment on this, she recalled her memories from school.

                Every time you are being caned, all you think about is the pain, how much your hand hurts. You don’t concentrate anymore. Emotionally I used to feel really low for being caned without reason, I used to cry for this.  You are either crying or hurting in silence during lessons and I don’t see how a child can continue concentrating on their studies after being caned in class.  If anything I’d rather the children’s were caned outside of the classrooms so it is not detrimental to their learning. If they have to be caned then the reasons should be explained, otherwise the children just end up hating the teacher or being afraid. Its fear, fear of the teacher which creates the dislike of the subject.

Lorna also commented on the social consequences that an increased pain threshold and a desensitisation of punishment may incite, children who are used to violence will of course grow up with anger and perpetuate a resentment to learn.  In extreme cases children will stuff exercise books or kanga’s underneath their clothes to protect them from the cane. So instead of the canes shaping their behaviour they become more radical and aggressive. A recent analysis of the physical punishement of children conducted  by the Canandian Medical Assosiation substantiates this, clearly indicating the damaging impact on chidlrens long term development.

The legal boundaries of corporal punishment in schools are incredibly blurred; there are lots of different laws saying lots of different things with no obvious accountability.  Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), an international treaty to which Tanzania is signatory declares that

States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child” (Article 19).

The Tanzanian Government therefore has an international obligation to protect and embed child rights within society. This is addressed in the Law of the Child Act (2009) which states that guardians ‘should protect children from all forms of violence (article 9). However, this article is undermined by article 13, allowing ‘justifiable correction’ which does not exclude all forms of corporal punishment.

Concentration in classrooms is already poor due to lack of food and hunger. The government says that schools should provide food for the pupils but fail to provide a budget for this. Parents are therefore asked to contribute maize and beans every quarter, but often struggle. Last year was particularly difficult due to the East African Drought there was barely a harvest.  Before Childreach International started their school farming project at Mgungani, many teachers thought children were being possessed, it was clear to a nutritionist that these children were malnourished.

There are many barriers to learning in place here.  For some, school is the only chance they get to eat and this hunger tests levels of concentration.   Combined with the pain and fear from caning and exhausting chores like cleaning and collecting firewood it is hardly astonishing that passing standard seven examinations appeared frequently in last week’s happy drawings.

In my final comment I would like to contest the justification of caning by educational professionals as ‘an African thing’, it isn’t. Tanzania inherited corporal punishment from Colonialism which was initially introduced by the Germans in 1886 and upheld by the British who replaced the strap with the cane. In 1952 the British proposed abolition which was reject by local opinion.

Making Art, Making Me will be introducing child rights into our forthcoming workshops, with particualr reference to Article 19.