Last week the nearby boarding school shut down. A student beat the assistant headmaster. It was possibly because that teacher had caned the student on the head and it connected to the spot where he recently had surgery. Now the student we sponsor is out of school for probably a month. He comes over to our place for a quiet place to study. I spent a few hours yesterday tutoring him with math. They’ve been studying reciprocal, square, and square root tables, and about to start studying logarithmic tables.

I admit, I’ve hardly ever used a logarithmic table in my life, but I guess up here where calculators are rare, it may be a useful skill to learn.

I asked Daniel to show me how he was taught to use the table. The first question: “What is the reciprocal if 2.64,” yielded an answer of 37,000. So we discussed how this can’t be right. He stepped through how the teacher taught him how to use the table, which gave completely erroneous answers.

“Daniel, you now have a problem. You’ll have to do these questions like the teacher wants, but when you take the national exam, that method will give the wrong answer, and you will miss those marks.”

Today we talked about the periodic table. He wanted to know how to tell what group an element is in. I explained how the electron shells are populated. The outermost shell (or energy level here in Kenya) determines what group it is in.

“Mwalimu said,” Daniel said, “we should subtract the outermost energy level from the second to outermost, and that number determines the group.”

I stared blankly at the page. I’m not sure even how to understand that explanation. I pointed out the paragraph in the textbook that clearly states how to determine the group of the element.

At least Daniel has a textbook. That’s not always available out here, either.

Its a tragedy. My eyes are opened wider to why the Turkana schools have a difficult time getting high marks on the national exams. It goes beyond testing, since these exams dictate whether the future the kids have includes what university they can attend, if any. It basically sets the course for the rest of their life.