Should we just accept inauthentic learning as a necessary part of the system? Or would it be better to recognise it as a waste of students' time when they should be doing what they need?

Some of the language problems that overseas university students have when they come to study in universities in Britain (or similar universities in their own countries) may have their roots in the limited range of experiences provided in the secondary schools or the emphasis on external signs instead of internal reality. Perhaps the most serious result of poverty in the so-called Third World has been the concentration on these mechanistic modes of learning at the expense of the creative (though it can also occur in a rich society run by people who falsely perceive it as being poor).

Another result of teacher-controlled methods is that students become very dependent on the teacher. In a society where teachers are in insufficient supply it is important to train as many people as possible to be self-motivating and to learn the techniques which will enable them to teach themselves. This is probably true of all societies but it is especially true of those with rapidly increasing populations and a currently low development of resources. Perhaps indeed it is only the rich societies which can afford to supply teachers to do things for people which they can do for themselves and the poor societies ought not to try to emulate them.

However, this is not to say that the English Block as it was run should be copied unchanged for all conditions. It took place at a time of transition when resources spent on individual schools were still high, compared with modern conditions in East Africa. This is not the place to discuss the details of the cost of this type of learning or what might be done with the resources allowed for conventional methods. However, one might note that no money was spent on course books and that the money saved was spent on a great variety of reading books. The English Block in both schools described required well-stocked libraries as sources of language and information. They also required a large amount of paper for the written work, especially for the large amount of rewriting that was necessary. The use nowadays of the computers which have been developed since then would have cost implications. On the one hand a computer is ideal for getting students to write and rewrite without requiring extra paper; on the other hand the capital and maintenance costs for enough computers (one per group?) might be beyond what most school administrations could be persuaded to spend. But computers used in this way would greatly enhance the students' ability to produce creative language work by using word-processing and desk top publishing techniques.