Lessons They Don’t Teach in Class
Picture this: the school bell rings, but instead of opening their books, children grab cutlasses to clear the overgrown grass around the compound. Or think of a classroom where the first lesson of the day isn’t mathematics, but how to wait quietly because the only toilet is broken. These aren’t scheduled subjects, but they are the daily lessons many children learn.
The Hidden Curriculum
Children in under-resourced schools are taught much more than what’s on the chalkboard:
• Endurance: Developing the ability to endure prolonged periods of thirst, recognising that access to drinking water often necessitates a lengthy journey, and acknowledging the lack of restroom facilities following such an endeavour.
• Improvisation: Using torn notebook papers instead of toilet tissue, finding small tricks to cope where systems have failed.
• Resignation: The quiet belief that this is normal, that life doesn’t offer more, and expectations should stay low.
They’re scars in disguise.
More Than Textbooks
The environment teaches as powerfully as any teacher. A broken toilet tells a child, “This is all you deserve”. This is about what those conditions whisper into young minds.
Poor sanitation plants seeds of low expectation. Safe spaces, on the other hand, grow confidence, health, and possibility. When children walk into a classroom with working toilets, clean water, and safe spaces, they learn that someone thought about them, that they matter enough for things to work, and that dignity is a right, not a privilege.
Small Choices, Big Consequences
Consider a boy who spends mornings cutting grass around the school compound instead of sitting in class. He adapts, of course, but the hidden lesson is that learning can wait and that survival is the real curriculum.
Flip the situation. Free that boy from manual labour, and he gets back hours each week that should have been his for learning. The difference is the kind of shift that changes futures.
What We Allow Them to Learn
We like to think children only absorb what’s in their textbooks. But that’s never been true. They’re learning from the spaces around them, from the conditions we provide, from the dignity that is in their everyday lives.
The fundamental question isn’t about whether children are learning; it’s about what we are allowing them to discover about themselves and the world around them. Are we encouraging them to passively accept neglect, or are we fostering environments that nurture their growth?
A Quiet Reflection
Children shouldn’t grow up believing that neglect is normal. They shouldn’t carry shame as part of their schooling. They deserve lessons that lift, not ones that quietly lower their gaze.
So perhaps pause and think: if schools are teaching survival in place of hope, what kind of adults will step out of those gates tomorrow?
Because the most powerful lessons are often the ones no one writes on the board.
How You Can Help
Donate: Your contributions allow us to expand this program to more schools.
By: Tolulope Adebajo
Project Director
Digging Well Foundation, Nigeria
Email: tolu.adebajo@diggingwell.org