WHO!

I love maths. I do not love in-house sporting competitions, Assumption Day, teacher workshops, thunderstorms, or the World Health Organization, all of which have succeeded--unfairly--in keeping students away from maths. 

One Monday a science teacher told me he needed my help in setting up a computer in the library. The previous week, WHO had dropped off surveys and that morning they'd called to inform him they would be back on Friday to collect the completed surveys. The senior secondary students were to answer a couple of pages of health-related multiple-choice questions, watch three videos, then answer the same multiple-choice questions again. There were many problems with this situation:

1. The school has 200 senior secondary students
2. The school has one computer with working speakers
3. The school has no projector
4. Power is unreliable
5. The students were supposed to be learning maths

Luckily, we were able to use Julia's laptop and divided the students into two groups; 100 in the library, 100 in the computer lab.

The three videos were awful. They weren't even videos, but interactive computer games, that weren't really interactive computer games so much as PowerPoint-esque presentations with too much writing on each slide.

The video about health and fitness taught students such important and relevant facts as “golfing, either walking or in a cart” is a low-level activity. It suggested they instead practice skipping. They could practice skipping on the balls of their feet, or practice skipping listening to the radio. The video also suggested "taking the dog for an evening walk" as a means of achieving their thirty minutes of daily exercise. Also, it warned students about “osteo-arthritis” and “high-density lipoproteins." 

The video about food safety instructed students to drink only pasteurized milk, not to thaw frozen foods at room temperature, and to wash bowls used for pets' food separately from those people will eat from.

In the video about malaria the students learned nothing they did not already know. I was proud of the fact that I knew which strain of malaria is most common in The Gambia, so after the video listed the four main types I paused it to ask the students if they also knew. Several bored voices replied, “P. falciparum.”

Oh, but perhaps the students did not know the history of malaria beginning with the evolution of the mosquito.

Perhaps they did not need to know.