15 Days
Just a week and a day left before I leave for Tanzania. Wow. I am surely getting excited. Now that my (temporary) living conditions are settled, and I have a dinner meeting with Kate as soon as I get there, and I have a very promising research assistant, I feel at least ready to go. My ticket has arrived in Cambridge and is in a FedEx truck as we speak. My orals are in exactly two weeks. My fellowship application to CID is in. Things are coming together.
For the CID application, I had to spin my proposal to fit an international development concept. This was interesting and I actually realized how relevant my study is to international development. If collectively Tanzanians regard education as a panacea to poverty alleviation, yet structural barriers prevent universal (or even near-universal) access to schooling, how can national development be realized or even justified under that collective belief? There are serious implications for national development; as for international development, I argued that, through the standpoint of the National exam (which is essentially the principal barrier to accessing secondary education) several African nations require their children to take these exams and essentially they serve the purpose of saving lots of money so that those kids don't get to go to secondary school. Yet, somehow the economy survives as best as it can; children are sent instead to agriculture jobs or, in many cases particularly with the epidemic, are orphaned or left to live on the streets - often on their own accord.
At the same time, there are implications - or at least parallels - for domestic education policies right here in the United States. No Child Left Behind has imposed standardized testing with high stakes for high schoolers. Do these tests change the collective sense of what education stands for in this country? Do these tests steer children into specific careers? Do they categorize children very early on into social and economic classes without giving the poor performing kids a chance to redeem themselves? What I need to do is look up the statistics on the passing rate of primary to secondary on the MCAS and mirror this to what is happening in Tanzania. It might not be that the test is so hard that only 20% proceed to secondary (as is the case in Tz), but if we are heading that way, we may be able to learn a lesson or two from the way things are going in Tz. It's a scary thought to compare this developing (or some might argue middle-developed) country to the biggest powerhouse in the world. But when it comes to social services like health and education, we might just be heading down a track akin to the less developed.
For the CID application, I had to spin my proposal to fit an international development concept. This was interesting and I actually realized how relevant my study is to international development. If collectively Tanzanians regard education as a panacea to poverty alleviation, yet structural barriers prevent universal (or even near-universal) access to schooling, how can national development be realized or even justified under that collective belief? There are serious implications for national development; as for international development, I argued that, through the standpoint of the National exam (which is essentially the principal barrier to accessing secondary education) several African nations require their children to take these exams and essentially they serve the purpose of saving lots of money so that those kids don't get to go to secondary school. Yet, somehow the economy survives as best as it can; children are sent instead to agriculture jobs or, in many cases particularly with the epidemic, are orphaned or left to live on the streets - often on their own accord.
At the same time, there are implications - or at least parallels - for domestic education policies right here in the United States. No Child Left Behind has imposed standardized testing with high stakes for high schoolers. Do these tests change the collective sense of what education stands for in this country? Do these tests steer children into specific careers? Do they categorize children very early on into social and economic classes without giving the poor performing kids a chance to redeem themselves? What I need to do is look up the statistics on the passing rate of primary to secondary on the MCAS and mirror this to what is happening in Tanzania. It might not be that the test is so hard that only 20% proceed to secondary (as is the case in Tz), but if we are heading that way, we may be able to learn a lesson or two from the way things are going in Tz. It's a scary thought to compare this developing (or some might argue middle-developed) country to the biggest powerhouse in the world. But when it comes to social services like health and education, we might just be heading down a track akin to the less developed.
posted by Priya @ 11:38 AM
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