Differences Of School Experiences

As for school experiences, there were similarities between education in the United States but there were also a lot of differences I noticed. The first big difference is what they call each level of schooling. Here we call them grades but in Malawi, they call them standards. Standard one through eight make up primary school, the equivalent of elementary and middle school here. They refer to, what we call pre-school, as necessary school and Pempho explained that when families don’t have money to send their child to necessary school, they just wait for them to turn four and enroll them into standard one. Once you reach standard eight, students are required to take a primary school leaving exam to go onto secondary school, similar to high school. …show more content…
She commented on how about 17,000 students apply to each university and only about 5,000 get in. The curriculum was relatively similar to that in the United States, schools teacher English, Chichewa, math, and science and then at the higher levels they have biology, physical sciences, and chemistry. When asked about the hidden curriculum, Pempho wasn’t exactly sure how they taught that in schools and she thought more of the stuff that we teach though hidden curriculum, was taught at home or within their initiation ceremonies. I gave the example of social skills such as looking a person in the eye when talking to them and she said stuff like that is usually taught more at home and in the community. As for the teaching styles that they use within schools in Malawi, they vary based on the school. She mentioned that in the normal public high schools, there are anywhere from 100-150 kids with two teachers in a classroom so the teaching styles in that setting is usually writing notes on the board and having student copy them down because there are too many kids to do anything …show more content…
She mentioned that the only time when she felt conscious of her cultural background was when she first went through customs, when entering the United States. I think an upside to not having an educational experience that forces you to be more conscious of your cultural background is the level of comfort you have within the academic setting and with teachers and peers. On the downside, those who don’t have an educational experience that makes them more self-conscious of their cultural background, similar to me, are not forced to really think about what makes up their