Timothy Allan Johnston
  • Home
  • Photographs
    • H/W 80's Dance Party
    • Cambridge
    • Calgary Rally in Support of Schools
    • 2022 Calendar Images
    • Etta's Album
    • 2021 Calendar Photographs
    • Wardair's Boeing 727
    • Grumman Goose CF-UAZ
    • Mitchell Bombers
    • Warbirds at Calgary
    • Okotoks Photo Walk
    • African Girl Children Exhibition
    • Theatre of the Gods
    • What Once Was
    • Spring Coulee to Vauxhall
    • No Whistle: An Abandoned Rail Line in Calgary
    • Trains and More Trains
    • At the Airdrie Rodeo
    • At the Arrowwood Rodeo, 2019
    • Mossleigh, Rockyford, Rosebud, Chancellor
    • Hand Hills Stampede
    • Millarville Rodeo 2017
    • Barrel Racers for Britney
    • Switching the Highfield Spur
    • Photo Cards Objects
    • Photo Cards Landscapes
    • Photo Cards Railroads
    • Southern Alberta Sweep
    • Southwest Saskatchewan
    • Osprey Family
    • Photo Walk 2015
    • Calgary Stampede 101
    • Gleichen Rodeo 2015
    • Tees Rodeo 2015
    • Millarville Rodeo 2015
    • Tsuu T'inna Rodeo 2015
    • Arrowwood Rodeo 2015
    • Calgary Stampede Rodeo 2015
    • Water Valley Rodeo 2015
    • Millarville Rodeo 2014
    • Longview Rodeo 2014
    • Arrowwood Rodeo 2014
    • Rockyford Rodeo 2014
    • Millarville Rodeo 2013
    • Pick Up Men at the Millarville Rodeo
    • Bar U Rodeo
    • Grace Under Pressure at the Water Valley Rodeo
    • Saturday at the Cochrane Rodeo
    • SBA Remains
    • Chestermere Barn
    • Landscape Print Sale
    • Recent Photographs
    • Pierce Estate Park and Southwest of Calgary
    • Turner Valley Refinery
    • Saturday in Inglewood
    • Within Twenty Miles
    • Saturday Downtown
    • In and Around Calgary
    • Canadian Images
    • Around Alberta
    • Around Alberta II
    • Bow River Ranch
    • Ottawa-Toronto Road Trip
    • Bridges
    • Egypt
    • Athens
    • Mykonos
    • Mozambique
    • Nature
    • Alberta Ballet "Mozart's Requiem"
    • Alberta Ballet "Pomp Without Circumstance"
    • Alberta Ballet "Up Close" new choreography
    • Alberta Ballet "Seven Deadly Sins"
    • Alberta Ballet "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy"
    • Alberta Ballet "Sleeping Beauty"
    • Alberta Ballet "Love Lies Bleeding"
  • Travel Journals
    • India 1986
    • Swaziland 1989
    • Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe 1993
    • Mozambique 1996
    • Honduras and Nicaragua 2000
    • Togo and Ghana 2001
    • Lome, Togo 2002
    • Mozambique 2003
    • Togo and Ghana 2004
    • Barbados, 2004
    • Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, 2006
    • Ghana 2009
    • Mozambique 2010
    • Tim's Canada Road Trip
  • Published Stories
    • Calgary Urban Sketchers
    • Doug Lansdell's Farm Tractors of the Past
    • Threshing Bee a nod to farm life of old
    • Westword Magazine
    • Calgary's Rail Line to the Past
    • A Carmen Red Jaguar
    • Alberta's Bessonneau Hangar
    • A barrel of fun in retirement for Maureen Marston
    • Clark Seaborn's Airplanes
    • 2442: Calgary Transit's Newest C-Train Car
    • No. 31 EFTS De Winton Celebration
    • Dave Richards at Heritage Park
    • Off the beaten path with Charley
    • You Oughta Be In Pictures
    • In the War Skies of Calgary
    • Calgary's National Music Centre
    • The Polar Express
    • Sirens' Song Silenced
    • Nick's Barbershop
    • A Visit to the Calgary Stampede Ranch
    • A Pony Named Midget
    • Bert Jackson, Bow Maker
    • Down Highway 12 and Home
    • A Field Trip to Lake Nyasa
    • "Remembering the Air Base that Time Forgot"
    • A "Daily Diary" History of RCAF Station Pearce, Alberta
    • Constructing the Aerodrome of Democracy: Civil Engineering and the Development of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan
    • Stubb Ross
  • Editor's Notebooks
    • Humor in the Classroom (and, sometimes, late at night, on the playground)New Page
    • Experiencing the World of Real Work
    • 100 Years of Renewal
    • An African Opportunity
    • "Flying Right"
    • The Canadian Teachers' federation
    • At the Edge of Learning
    • Distant Shorelines
    • Computer Renovations
    • 75 Years
    • Where Were You When the Blue Jays Won?
    • Deadwood, Wild Horse, Paddle Prairie, Big Stone
    • Gone Flyin'
    • Birthday Gifts from Delhi
    • Stories from the Veld
    • Travelling the Border Country
    • Teachers Teaching
    • Last of the First Days
    • Principal
    • No "Snags" in these School Councils
    • Finding History in my Own "Backyard"
    • Humour In the Classroom
    • A "Learningful" Experience
    • Riding the Muskeg Special
    • The Big Picture
    • A Decade of Faces
  • Contact
  • Cambridge
                                                          At the Edge of Learning

One day, while standing in the middle of a school yard in Chibuto, Mozambique, I watched as more than 600 children were taught by the school’s eight teachers in the broad shade of cashew trees. In the case of Chibuto School, and many other schools in Africa, the school yard was the school. There was no building, apart from reed partitions put around a tree to provide space for the school’s administrative office. Students sat on the sandy ground, listening attentively as the teachers delivered lessons orally and illustrated them on painted pieces of scrap plywood tied to the trees and serving as blackboards.

Education conditions in rural Mozambique in 1993 were quite desperate and, while many children were attending schools, many more could not. Much of the expense of operating schools was absorbed by the government but parents were expected to pay a basic fee and cover the cost of a school uniform. Around the edges of the school compound sat clusters of children. I asked why they weren’t sitting closer to their cohorts, and I learned that they were not enrolled at Chibuto School because their parents could not afford the fees. These children, who were unlikely to ever learn to read, write or calculate, were some of Chibuto’s, and indeed the world’s, lost children.

At a UN summit in 1990, nearly 200 heads of state endorsed eight development goals for the new millennium and set time frames for accomplishing each one. The goals are interlinked and mutually supportive, and two of the goals ring particularly true for teachers. The first is the achievement of universal primary education for all children and the second is the elimination of gender disparity at all levels of schooling. In 2000, during the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, "Education for All" guideposts were established to mark the path toward improving early childhood care and education, ensuring that all children would be able to complete free, good quality primary education, and eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education.

It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The diplomatic efforts of world leaders and the accords they put their names to are unlikely to bear fruit without further prompting from civil society groups and concerned citizens. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE), an international coalition of education and child support organizations, campaigns annually to motivate governments to honour the promises they made. Global Action Week is the most visible GCE activity, and this year its "Send My Friend to School" campaign is involving children from all over the advantaged world.

With help from learning packages from the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, teachers and students construct life-sized cut-outs that represent children who do not have access to schooling (see, "Taking global action—Jasper school tackles poverty," page 6). Some of the cut-outs will be displayed in Ottawa during a CTF meeting with members of parliament. Afterward, the cut-outs will be sent to international meetings where they will be joined by cut-outs from students in other parts of the advantaged world. The will of world youth to see the lives of all children improved through free access to good education will be powerfully presented through this collection of surrogate friends.

There are still children in Chibuto waiting at the edge of learning for their chance at an education. By teaching our students about these realities, perhaps more children can join the circle of their friends and listen to a teacher’s lesson.

© 2010 The Alberta Teachers’ Association