Why Uganda’s schools are miracle birth control pills

Uganda recently notched up the world’s longest continuous partial or full closure of primary and secondary schools, as part of the Covid-19 lockdown, longer than even wars have been able to do in many places.

The National Planning Authority projects that 30 per cent of pupils and students in the country are likely not to return to school forever and that 3,507 primary and 832 secondary schools in the country are likely to be shuttered.

The continued closure, however, has presented an opportunity to look at schools and education in new ways. Crises tend both to close, but also open eyes. Consider for example that with couples cooped up at home during the lockdown and in each other’s faces, in Uganda and all over the world there was a sharp rise in gender-based violence (GBV). Restless men without the distractions of the open world, feeling emasculated by the virus, turned their frustrations on their partners with deadly consequences. In the process, we got to see that workplaces that keep men away from home, with them returning in the evening when they are knackered; and the sports pubs that distract them and drain their energies are part of the unofficial network of institutions and safety valves against GBV. So it is with schools.

In this period, we have seen more clearly extra functions schools and teachers serve, but can only outline four here.

MAGIC BIRTH CONTROL PILLS: Perhaps one of the most tragic aspects of the lockdown is the hundreds of thousands of schoolgirls who have become pregnant as a result of the economic vulnerabilities exacerbated by the Covid-19 lockdown and the fact that there were a lot of young men and men about doing little else. A lot of the 30 per cent of the students who won’t go back to school, are those who became young (many teenage) mothers. Schools, then, are Uganda’s magic birth control pills. They organise students’ time, help them establish a mental space, routines, and goals that prevent millions of schoolgirls and students from having unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. A friend calls all these put together “structure”.

TEACHING IS UNPAID PARENTING: The schoolgirls’ pregnancies described above give a better understanding of some things schools and teachers do. In normal times, students probably spend more time with teachers than their parents. The attention the teachers give them, the chaperoning, corralling and keeping them out of trouble and predators’ path, essentially makes teachers parents; some kind of super nannies. However, they are not paid for it. They are paid only for the class stuff.

THE GREAT POLITICAL PROPHYLACTIC:  The last two years have taught us that schools are a great political prophylactic, preventing students from getting embroiled in activist politics and trying to change the world. It has been argued that part of the reason for the global wave of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 was because young people were at home not going to class or work. Their anger and militant blood were able to boil up because there wasn’t much school, homework, and deadlines to steal their revolutionary spirits. It’s possible the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray state might have taken a different course if there were not a lot of young people not doing anything. At home, the Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) and his National Unity (NUP) wave that rattled President Yoweri Museveni in the last election, also seems to have profited from the school closure, forcing the government in its most violent crackdown ever outside the war conditions in Teso, the north, and Kasese that we witnessed in years gone by.

Extended periods of wearing uniforms, books, the chalkboard, school corridors, and the authority of teachers are political sedatives and dilute rebellious juices. Lawino, the sharp-tongued wife of Ocol in Okot p’Bitek’s seminal “Song of Lawino”, pretty much says the same thing.

SCHOOLS ARE REAL ESTATE BUSINESSES, AND STUDENTS TENANTS:  In less than two years of lockdown, a record number of private schools had gone belly up, and those that had bank loans were on the chopping block. School grounds have been turned into maize and potato gardens. In government schools, we have anthills and vegetation growing inside classrooms. The absence of students from schools has been the equivalent of having thousands of apartments unoccupied by tenants. The developer can quickly go into financial distress, and the buildings will begin to fall apart. Students are tenants and warm bodies that give life to buildings. The school owners are landlords. It is a point that has been underscored, unintentionally, by remote learning, which has served to illustrate that school buildings are important yes, but are a very small part of the learning equation.

-The author is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3