Benchmarking

When Isatou talks about her education, she puts it into the present and the future. The present includes her working on her studies, learning how to cook, and selling groundnuts to pay for her school fees. However when she talks about the future, she adds to the figured world of being a schoolgirl by imaging all of the things that her status as a schoolgirl will bring her when she joins the community of

educated women. Isatou sees that when she joins this imaginary community of educated women she will be able to do what educated women are allowed to do, and she will be the equal of all educated people, men, and women.

The larger community has a list of what an educated woman can and cannot do as well. Moving from the claims of what a schoolgirl can do that an out-of-school girl cannot moves the period into the future when these schoolgirls will enter the largely imaginary community of educated women. Kanno and Norton (2003) define an imagined community as a way to “expand(s) our range of possible selves” (p. 246). By envisioning herself as a member of the figured world of schoolgirls, she can see herself becoming, in the future, a part of a community of educated women. Drawing upon Kanno and Norton’s construction of imagined communities, I ask:

What are the imaged communities (groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of imagination) that add to the figured world of a schoolgirl?

Throughout my three years of interviewing her, Isatou has listed the privileges that she will have once she is a member of this community of educated women. As an educated woman she will be able to have preferential treatment in the job market, she will be able to have someone cook for her, and she will know how to present herself when she speaks in public.

Isatou’s claim that educated women know how to “present themselves” has been restated by several adult women interviewed. It is interesting that they speak of how education gives you the right to speak in public forums. Indeed, in the public forums I have attended, at schools, in community meetings about the diamond mining industry, and political forums, women rarely speak but those who do can claim a university education that speak out.

Isatou and the other schoolgirls emphasize that an educated woman is ‘useful’:

195. Ophelia: Gal pikin if yu lan yu go bi behteh porsin tumoro. (Translation:

If a girl child is not educated you will not be of any good use in future).

The schoolgirls also emphasize that an educated woman can go anywhere. Perhaps they are putting the emphasis on this point to me so that I will get the hint and take them to America. However, it does require more literacy than day-to-day life in Kono to get a passport, visa, plane ticket, and all of the other things required to travel. In the first interview in 2010, Kadidja said:

196. Jordene: Describe shining future?

197. Kadidja: Yes. A shining future. Like me if I learn my education for example, maybe somebody will take me from here. Hmmm- – I can go to America. Because I educate but those who are not educated they will not go there, they do not know what they can say and what they can do. So if you ask me that question that is what I have to say.

Other claims that are made about this imagined community of educated women are that they will be independent as one schoolgirl’s father said:

198. Portia’s Father: But if you are not educated who is going to fight for you. No way. Education is the key to success. Try with your education. If you have been educated you are an independent woman. That was my advice to her every day to her.

Being independent is not easy in a community in which much is intertwined. Satu, one of the schoolgirls in this study, is currently very dependent on her mother. Satu’s two older sisters and her mother are all petty traders, selling cassava leaf and potato leaf from trays that they carry through town to sell. Satu’s sisters both have young children and so it is often only Satu’s mother who brings home any income.

199. Satu: We tin nor mor a go tehl mi kornpin dehm leh wi lan buk we wi lan buk we wi mama go day wi nor go pornish. (Translation:

What I have to tell my friends is that we need to be educated. When we are educated, when your mum dies, you will not suffer.)

The educated woman does not suffer because she has the skills and independence to make her own way in the world. Ophelia adds:

200. Ophelia: We yu lan yu de go ehni say we yu fil we yu bi behteh porsin tumara.

(Translation: If you learn you are a better person tomorrow). The imagined community of educated women to which these schoolgirls envision themselves entering is made up of better people, who are useful, independent, have skills, do not suffer, and can travel to America.