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News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

November 29, 2004

NIU professors to write next chapter
in College of Education's Kenya Literacy Project

DeKalb — Two professors from the Department of Teaching and Learning in Northern Illinois University's College of Education will spend most of December in Kenya, continuing a colleague’s work to improve the standard of living and learning in one of the country’s rural villages.

Maylan Dunn and C. Sheldon Woods depart Thursday, Dec. 2, for Mwala, a small village about 90 miles southeast of Nairobi in the district of Machakos, where they will train teachers in the latest research on early childhood and elementary education and how to apply it in the classroom.

“The divide between the urban and rural areas is getting bigger and bigger,” said Dunn, who visited Kenya earlier this year in January. “Families have to spend so much of their labor capacity on getting water and food, and the children play a big role in that.”

Their work is the latest chapter in an evolving story authored by Moses Mutuku, an assistant professor of early childhood education, who has studied the gap between urban and rural learning in his native country since 2000.

Mutuku quickly realized the nature of the problem: Urban dwellers enjoy an ample and easily obtained supply of water, food and economic opportunity. He began a course of action to improve the standard of living – along with the attitudes and abilities of the residents – in one rural town to see if higher test scores would follow.

The work is concentrated on Mwala, where he has already fixed many of the water-related issues and built a community library.

His goal is to make educational opportunities equal and, eventually, convince the Kenyan government on a nationwide plan based on his work in Mwala.

The challenges for students are many, Dunn said, and go beyond the considerable and valuable hours they must devote each day to fetching water.

Classrooms are dim and without electricity. Teachers write on pieces of cloth or, if necessary, the walls. A lack of doors or locks on the schools, compounded by a termite infestation, requires students to carry all materials back and forth from the headmaster’s secure office to the classrooms each morning and night.

Staffing and a growing enrollment also pose problems.

Although the government funds salaries for teachers at the primary level, it expects parents of pre-primary students to compensate the teachers of their children. Rural poverty caused by rampant unemployment often translates into meager wages for pre-primary teachers, some of whom are paid in goods rather than money. Meanwhile, the government’s choice not to impose qualifications for pre-primary teachers allows teachers without high school diplomas.

At the same time, attendance is on the rise as parents seek a safe haven for their children from the political struggle that has paved the road to fair and democratic elections and the transition to a new coalition government.

The new leadership guarantees free primary schools (first- through eighth-grade) but does not extend that provision to pre-primary or high schools or to materials beyond text books and pads of paper. Some children now are arriving at primary school with no previous classroom experience, while other communities struggle to provide the building, the uniforms and other necessary resources.

Yet education is valued despite the obstacles.

“Families really care about education, for both boys and girls,” she said. “The thing that keeps them out of the classroom is a lack of resources.”

NIU’s teams, which have also included TLRN colleague Randi Wolfe, take whatever supplies they are able to purchase with their own money and donations from friends and coworkers.

Kenyan teachers are appreciative, Dunn said, but they want something more. “The teachers say, ‘Don’t just send us stuff. Come work with us.’ They want specialized training in just being a teacher,” she said.

“One of the things we know is that from birth to age 3, the brain is growing at a tremendous rate. Those are critical years for nurturing in an appropriate environment,” she said.

“At age 3, they begin pruning anything they’re not using. Intelligence is inhibited by their environment. In Kenya, the issues include nutrition and sanitation, a source of electricity, clean water,” she added. “The question becomes: What kind of environment is going to increase their learning at those critical times? Parents feel that if the children are well-fed, then they’re doing well. It’s up to the pre-primary teachers to provide that environment.”

NIU’s professors also give the teachers ideas that work despite the lack of materials, such as drawing on their strong cultural heritage of storytelling, games, music and drama.

For Dunn, the invitation Mutuku gave her to participate in the project was something she “always wanted.”

“When the opportunity came up, I jumped at it. It’s the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “I’ve gained more than I’ve given.”

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