Shannon’s Story

Posted: November 12th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »

Interview in the Guardian with Shannon May, a Bridge co-founder.

What were your reasons for founding Bridge International Academies? Where did the idea come from?

The original idea actually occurred in China when I was working on my PhD on development. I was working on an eco-system project to totally re-organise this group of nine villages into a carbon neutral eco-city. I was there for 18 months. But as part of the government plan to allow me to do my work, unbeknown to me, I had become the village’s primary school teacher for the entire time I was there. So I had to teach English to all of the children every day. So while I was working on this environment sustainability city plan and doing all sorts of analysis on the household economies of those living in the village, I was also teaching children.

It soon become clear that no matter what the programme was going to do, whether it was successful or not, it really wouldn’t matter for the people that lived there. Because the real fundamental problem, was that 90% of the population was functionally illiterate and they didn’t have basic algebra skills.

Through my interviews, I discovered that very few of the families understood if they were making or losing money. They didn’t possess the skills to do that sort of time-sensitive accounting over a long period of time. It wasn’t that they were less intelligent; it was because they were poorly educated. And every morning I would see that in the village school where the teachers didn’t show up, came unprepared or drunk. There was a total lack of accountability around what a teacher is meant to do.

Read the whole thing here.