In the article “The Issue – Rwandan schools bear the weight of history: news”published in TES Global Limited, author Jackson Twagirayezu describes how being a teacher at a Rwanda school can extremely difficult and uncontrollable at times, but it is on the path to success. The article starts off with the author explaining imagine what it would be like if your parents, brothers or sisters had committed genocide. Teachers, including the author found it very difficult to teach this subject. The reason the teachers struggled teaching this disturbing subject was because they to overcome their own nightmares and grief from what happened in 1994. Therefore genocide was not taught for a while in Rwanda schools for the reason of personal issues with the teachers that had to go through it. In 2007 a debate took place on the issue of genocide and how it should be handled in schools in Rwanda. They only teach genocide between the ages of 11-14 for certain reasons of maturity. The author tells how teachers had to be careful with the subject and not go into detail about the events that took place. It is important in the culture that the kids do learn and acknowledge genocide, but to an extent.
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This article is hard to understand and had to do research on the subject "genocide" before actually typing this blog. I can see where it is a disturbing subject to teach to kid who in my opinion aren't mature enough to fully understand the subject of genocide. Teachers in Rwanda have it a lot harder then other teachers I my eye's. They have to know exactly what they are talking about when it comes to genocide I understand and agree that the kids do need to know about what happened in 1994, just like our kids need to know about 9/11 or the wars that took place in 20th century. I would personally find it very difficult to be a student and having to learn about genocide.
One thing I found confusing about this article is that it didn't clarify exactly what genocide was. If I had no prior knowledge to what genocide was I would have a hard time understanding this article. Another thing I found interesting about this post is that it talks about how teachers handle the topic of genocide. Other articles I have read never discussed a teachers point of view and that is why I find this article so interesting. Do you think it will be easier for them to talk about genocide in the near future when hopefully it has come to an end? Do you think that the will go more in depth with detail once everyone who lived through it will have passed? I couldn't imagine how difficult this would have been for everyone, especially the teachers knowing that they have to talk about it. I think that would bring up a lot of emotions that I would not want to share with others. I have a lot of respect for teachers in general, but they are definitely passionate about teaching and that's what makes a good teacher. It helped me understand more about how the teachers were feeling towards talking about genocide to the class when you compared it to modern day and 9/11, I found that a great comparison. This article was very interesting and informative about genocide.
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