Tuesday, December 4, 2012

School Motto

All secondary schools that I have visited in Tanzania have some sort of school motto. It usually tries to give the meaning that education will better your living situation. One simple example I can think of is just “Education is Liberation”. All students will stand up and repeat this motto before beginning a lesson. My school, however, has a longer motto as you can see painted on a school wall below.
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While you can see that the motto here is quite a bit longer than the motto I used above as an example (education is liberation), the statement that the students are required to say before each lesson is ridiculously long. Recently, Jon took a video of the students saying it in front of our home:
School Motto
Technically, these students are expected to say this motto before each and every lesson of every day. Personally, I feel that it is a huge waste of time because of the length of the motto. I asked the students to not say it before English and just to say “what’s up”? to me in place of it.
Jon and I can’t totally understand all that they are saying even though it is in English, however, the one part that we can understand which makes us smirk is “death is not sweeter than life”. What a weird thing to make teenagers say…

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