Tuesday 13 April 2010

A Visit to Africa

Two scientists from one of the finest universties in the world called Harvard University went to Africa for a short visit. They went to Liberia to visit some schools there and see how students learn there. They were shocked to see that the students were lucky enough to have seats to sit on inside their classes. Teachers stood in front of their students and talked all the time. Liberia is a very poor African country. This is because Liberia was devastated by two civil wars that left every thing in the country in a horrible situation.

Most students in Liberia learn through lectures and memorization. They listen to the teachers and read the lessons over and over again. In their science lessons they don’t have any thing to practise with in their labs. Most of them don’t even have computers to use at home.

Liberia was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves but two civil wars broke out in 1989 and ended in 2003. The wars killed hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the country’s infrastructure. During the wars, every thing in the country was destroyed. Thousands of people were murdered, trees were burnt and thousands of animals were killed.

The one thing that the two scientists noticed was that students were open to new ideas and eager to learn. They started providing training to science teachers and had a chance to visit the University of Liberia, the Ministry of Education and ten schools where they taught students. They also provided lessons on eating healthy food because they saw that many people in Liberia were still suffering from starvation.

The scientists found a room that was used as a lab. The equipment inside was never used and most of the teachers didn’t know how to use it. They also found some computers but they were heavily infected with viruses.

Now they want to send some computers to different schools in Liberia. They want to send antivirus programs and open-source software on USBs so that schools with no internet connection can use them. Open-source software is free software that programars make available for anyone to download. The two scientists also want to go back to Liberia next summer to offer whatever their help and see what else is needed.