The School in Sary Moghul
Culture and History, KyrgyzstanOne Comment
During our recent outreach trip in Central Asia, we (Peter, James, Leila, Ben) stayed overnight in Sary Moghul, a village in southern Kyrgyzstan, on which I posted on recently. We used the morning of our departure for a stroll around the place and ended up at the village’s only school.
The headmaster of the school came in early that morning. He was surprised to see us gang of foreigners stand on his courtyard, but politely asked us inside his office and offered us a seat. From him, we got all important numbers:
Sary Moghul’s school is attended by children and teenagers from the first class onwards up to grade 11. There are about 780 pupils altogether, and teaching takes place in Kyrgyz. Besides Russians, English is also told, although we couldn’t audit any English class, unfortunately. School starts at nine in the morning, and, as Sary Moghul is quite a small place, the streets are crowded with young people during the minutes before classes start.
After our meeting with the headmaster, we went into a classroom, where a class of about 20 kids (maybe fourth grade) was just about to start with their Kyrgyz lesson. Once we entered the room, every one of them stood up, said zdra-zdvu-jte rather loudly in a choir and sat down again. The teacher, a tall elderly man, offered us to take a seat (for which many kids had to share a bench between three of them), and proceeded with his class. Before we left, we took a group photo, and the kids politely shouted do svidanija.
My former colleague in Bishkek graduated from school here. He comes back regularly to visit his parents and also to see where and how he can help in the classrooms. Thanks to him, Sary Moghul’s school now has a computer room with four computers and a printer. Some years ago, donations were more basic and included chalkboards, chairs and desks.
Last year, out of the people finishing the final grade, about 15 made it to Osh to pursue a degree at university. This year, however, numbers dropped to only 3.
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I wonder if the dropping number of the students indicative of the quality of education… Russian is now taught as a foreign language, there is a lack of qualified teachers, and as we saw, young people are leaving, so only elders are left to teach.
In our second class we visited there were no blackboards and children did not have notebooks… I wonder if they have textbooks at all. Murghab, which is bigger and is a “raionny centr”, still uses Soviet time textbooks in their classes.
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