Why Build a School in Zambia?
You know the story about the starfish, right? Of course, you do. Since Loren Eiseley published the essay entitled
The Star Thrower in 1968, his parable has been adapted, revised, retold countless times, usually in a context
we might call “motivational,” and the chances are better than good you’ve come across it a few times. It feels like
there are almost as many versions as there are tellings—I will tell my own version in a few minutes, just in case you’ve
forgotten the story—and indeed stories with the same message but featuring something other than starfish, sometimes
presenting disturbing choices, might be as old as the act of storytelling itself.
The two characters in the story, let’s call them the walker and the thrower, are often an old man and a boy, but their
roles in the story can switch. Sometimes the thrower is someone important to one world view or another. Sometimes the
walker joins the thrower after a moment of enlightenment. Sometimes there are extended narratives before, after, or
before and after the key moment. At least once, the story has been told from the point of view of one of the starfish.
As with any parable, the starfish story is vulnerable to criticism as presenting too simplistic a frame around the world
as it is and as it should be, but this sort of critique is usually directed toward the moralizing that follows the
telling and the stretching of the metaphor in an attempt to capture tactics and strategy. These critiques, but also and
often the telling of the story too, tend to miss the point, I think.
This and Header Photo by
PEAS
Photo by PEAS
- 324 pupils (52% of girls and 20% are boarded). Most of these kids did not have high grades, i.e. were below the government cut-off for advancement and would not have been accepted in traditional secondary schools.
- 75% of the pupils come from families living below the US poverty line.
- Currently, in partnership with the Zambian government, tuition is free and boarding costs are $150 a year.
- Overall, the student body demonstrated a 67% improvement in test score over the course of the school year.
Photo by Pedro Lastra, used under Creative
Commons.
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