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“GOSESO teaches us the strategies to face future problems and gives us the techniques to make things better for ourselves instead of waiting for someone else to make it better. This is how we are supposed to live.” –Bashiru, GOSESO student |
Many educational systems of the world are based on the idea that a student is a receptacle to be filled with knowledge in order to regurgitate that knowledge for a test. The Tanzanian system is not much different and many students receive an education without ever to learning "to think." GOSESO is trying something different. While the main focus of the current program is the education received in order to succeed during the national examinations, GOSESO is developing an atmosphere that promotes independent thought, critical thinking, and debate through discussion periods. With student-centered hands-on education, GOSESO students will not only be able to set and accomplish goals for themselves but will be given the knowledge and ability to find solutions and create change within their communities.
Our daily schedule of classes begins at 8:00 am and continues until 3:30 pm. Every day, students receive a breakfast of tea and rolls, as well as a lunch of ugali (a traditional Tanzanian dish) and beans. From 3:30 pm until 5:30 pm we have group discussion periods or review sessions for the exams. On Saturdays, students take practice examinations from 8:00 am until 12:00 noon.
In conjunction with the current students and faculty, curriculum at GOSESO will continue to be shaped by students and teachers. GOSESO curriculum incorporates environmental literacy throughout all subject areas, as well as establishing environmental science and leadership as independent subjects. We hope to challenge students to become self-directed and self-disciplined. The GOSESO curriculum has three imperatives: (1) to foster sustainable linkages of human-environment relations, (2) to enhance economic sustainability and capacity building, and (3) to promote community stability and cultural understanding. Click here to learn more about specific areas of study.
GOSESO focuses on developing new grassroots educational tools as a means for building human and social capital for local economic development, social justice, and natural resource conservation in the Lake Tanganyika region of western Tanzania. Specifically, the goal has been to integrate academic scholarship and participatory interaction with local people to create a curriculum strongly shaped by practical needs assessments and the involvement of indigenous knowledge.
GOSESO pedagogy employs a place-based curriculum and is based on understanding that people acquire knowledge in many ways through diverse learning styles and multiple intelligences; through different contexts where learning occurs; through different learning approaches such as cooperative, service-learning, project-based, peer-assisted, and cross-age learning; and, at different developmental levels of appropriateness.