Back up a couple of days to when the SOS entrance exam was being given. The exam had been created by SOS. My staff and I had come to the testing site to help proctor it, as Abaarso would also be accepting its students based on this test. Only about half of the 150 students who had qualified actually showed up. I couldn’t imagine how this could be, when the national opinion of SOS was so high. How could some students travel from the far regions of the country and others not even bother to come? When the paltry turnout was confirmed, walk-ins were allowed to sit for the exam. I was baffled by how these walk-ins knew to be here. Maybe this poor turnout happened every year, I thought—which I soon learned was indeed the case. But how could random walk-ins possibly compete with the top students in the country? I guess the exam results would speak for themselves.
Those who had come were mostly boys. There were some girls, too, but the split was 85:15. Nor did SOS have the dorm space to take many girls. In Billeh’s day, it was boys only, and while girls were now welcome there, they were a small minority.
Students would list their first choice—SOS or Abaarso—then after the scores were tallied, the top students would get their chosen school until one of the schools filled up. Then everyone left on the list went to the other. Foolishly, I thought we would fill up first. Boy, was I wrong. Local society was not aware of my dream to build a world-class school that would develop the future leaders of the country, nor would they have granted my idea any credibility had they been aware of it. My vision wasn’t even credible to my friends back home.
I had a lot to learn about the ways a war-torn society is broken, and the exam itself would provide my first big lesson. The 126 students who were taking the test were spread over a handful of rooms. Each room was equipped with table-like desks, and each desk had a short bench, which jammed in three students. The kids were literally sitting shoulder to shoulder. In each room, there was a monitor from Abaarso and a monitor from SOS. Even then, proctoring so many students who were so closely packed together would not be easy.
No sooner had the test begun than the rampant and blatant cheating started. I had never seen anything like it. If you just walked into the testing room, you would assume a group project was in session, with the students beautifully joining forces to share notes and ideas. Of course, it wasn’t a group project. It was a straight-up, independent examination with students engaging in the most overt cheating imaginable.
I decided that my best course of action would be to alert the SOS proctor in the room so we could tackle the situation together. He heard me, made one public announcement, and went back to acting totally oblivious. It was all on me, so I went around the room myself, personally taking on offenders. I warned them directly; I moved them around; I moved them apart—nothing was effective. The second I walked away, the students would go back to talking and sharing answers. If it were up to me, I would have kicked out half the class, but watching the way the SOS teacher responded, I realized it was me who hadn’t gotten the memo. Cheating on exams was acceptable; punishing it wasn’t.
At the break, I met up with my Abaarso staff and found they were already talking about the cheating. We were all North Americans used to silent exam rooms, and now we were one-upping each other for the most egregious act of cheating we’d witnessed.
As the exam came to an end, I decided to put dark dots on the papers of the handful of worst cheaters in the room, so I could evaluate their scores with this information in mind. Even cheating hadn’t helped one kid. He had been one of the worst offenders in the room, leaning over for answers from someone else’s test at every opportunity, but he had the fifth-lowest score of the entire group. In a way, I felt bad for him. He had been failed by his prior schools and should never have been put in this position. Three of the others hadn’t stopped sharing with each other the entire test. Their scores weren’t bad, and the best of them was among the top in the country, but how much had the cheating inflated his score?
Having scored the exams, I was able to answer my own question about how walk-ins could compete with the sixty students who showed up from those who had truly been invited, the “top” students in the country. It turns out that walk-ins absolutely could compete, partially because some of the “top” students in the country were obviously frauds. One of these scored only 21 points out of 150; eight others scored under 33 percent; and twenty of the sixty scored under 50 percent. Meanwhile, some of the walk-ins scored among the highest, earning six of the top twenty spots and nineteen of the top fifty. While there seemed to be some statistical significance to being a “top student” on the national exam, it was clearly limited. The idea that we were selecting from an already well-pruned elite was a myth.
* * *
Now, walking into the classroom where my charter class awaits, I need to win them over. That 87 percent of the students chose SOS over my school, including the majority now in this room, has my competitive juices flowing. I don’t even know these kids yet; they are still just faces to me rather than real people. The only thing I do know is that they bet against my school. If I am honest with myself, at this moment, my desire to win trumps all other motives. It’s not noble, but it is true. But, for me, my competitive streak has always been an asset.
Now that the kids are in the room, I give them a couple of examples of what will make our school different and exciting. I have my game face on as I walk up to the blackboard in the front of the class. There must have been an English-language class here before me because on the blackboard are English words and their negations using “non.” There are a dozen examples and yet somehow every single one of them is wrong. Next to “true” is “nontrue” instead of “untrue,” next to “able” is “nonable,” and so on. Just by luck, one of them should be right, but none are. They are all “noncorrect.”
English is an official language in Somaliland and there is a big societal push to improve citizens’ proficiency, but success to date is extremely limited. There is good reason why Somalilanders should improve their English. It’s estimated that only a bit more than ten million people in the world speak Somali. The language wasn’t even standardized using the Latin alphabet until the 1970s. Accordingly, very few books are written in Somali. Without knowing an international language, Somalis will be severely limited in their academic aspirations. English is the key to unlocking education of all kinds.
“English itself is no better a language than Somali,” I tell the students. “But English is the most internationally used language. I am just lucky to have been born in an English-speaking country, as it is the most useful language to know. You weren’t as lucky, but with Abaarso you have highly educated teachers who are native English speakers.” I then point to the board. “Every one of these is wrong. It isn’t your teachers’ fault that they don’t know English; it isn’t their language. You wouldn’t want to learn Somali from me.”
Of course, I am giving my speech in English to a mostly non-English-speaking crowd. That doesn’t stop me from sharing enthusiasm, a universal language. From there I put some logic problems on the board, to be interactive and to show them another difference in our school. Abaarso will be all about challenging their brains to think, not memorize. I am heartened when the first boy comes up to the board to give it a try. Throughout, I keep my eye on Amal, who seems to be more accepting by the minute. I have no idea she called her mother and said, “Oh my God, I got into a school called Abaarso, and a white man teaches it. I didn’t see that coming.” She asked her mother what she should do, and her mother told her to give it a try.
Mubarik hasn’t even wanted to come into the room. He has stayed outside so long that the room monitor at the door doesn’t believe he has made the cut and wants to recheck his ID. Once inside, all he wants to do is run. He doesn’t speak any English and has no idea what I am saying. He still feels guilty about not being able to pay, so he figures he is wasting everyone’s time. He slips out of the room before the presentation is even over.