The Privilege of Education

Chris Darby is quick to tell you that he had a privileged start to life, but the “privilege” he focuses on isn’t money or position, it’s education. Although he grew up in a Catholic context where he was taught by Jesuit priests, brothers, or affiliated laypeople in an educational environment where he was encouraged to ask and think about difficult questions, it wasn’t until later in life that Chris found a faith that made sense to him.

Born in 1953 in Scotland to an Irish mother and an English father, it was probably inevitable that Chris would spend his early life feeling as though the earth was a little shaky under his feet. But after moving to London at age thirteen and coming of age in the turbulent sixties and seventies, he met some charismatic Catholics who helped him come to the realization that, as he put it, “I’ve got things all wrong—I need God to sort me out.”

That was in 1974, at the end of his second year at University. He and his girlfriend Marina got married and started together on the journey of their Christian faith as they headed off to France and Italy for a year of language study. 

Chris and Marina in 2013. Photo Credit: Rachel Wolverton

The couple finished up school in the UK, and then for the next twenty-seven years lived in Reading, working in the educational system. Chris taught eleven to eighteen year olds (“In many cases, things they didn’t want to learn,” he says with a wry smile), and after seven or eight years became the head of modern languages at the school. By that time he was thirty and his wife was twenty-nine and they’d had four children. Chris went on teaching in secondary schools, and became increasingly involved in materials’ development, teacher training, and curriculum development. But as the couple approached their fifties, they realized they needed a new challenge.

They found that challenge through some friends at their church who were with Wycliffe Bible Translators (including SIL LEAD consultant Maik Gibson) and who, Chris recalls, “seemed moderately okay—not too freaky.” The Darbys decided to explore their options with Wycliffe, and when they were offered a choice between “dangerous, or less dangerous,” he says they “wimped out” and went with “less dangerous,” out of concern for their ageing parents.

The less dangerous option turned out to be Senegal, and the Darbys headed off with enthusiasm and a healthy dose of good humor in April of 2005, to work in literacy. They remained there, based in Dakar, until July of 2016, working on a variety of projects. But as Chris settled into local language work, curriculum development, and team and capacity building, he began to see that mother-tongue literacy needed to be more than a peripheral project for a few linguists and their local counterparts—it needed to find its way into the mainstream education system of Senegal.

During this time they got to know Dennis & Susan Malone, who provided a lot of the impetus for the EMiLe project—a multilingual education pilot program Chris helped to run in twelve schools in Senegal, from 2012 to 2016—four of which were state schools.

The ball was rolling, and if you care to know in what direction, you need look no further than the title of the project, “EMiLe.” The capital “E,” “M,” and “L” were chosen to represent “Éducation Multilingue,” but they added the lower case “i” and “e”,  so that it would spell a boy’s name — Emile — reminding everyone involved that the project was and always would be about people. 

Some of the first materials produced by EMiLe, in classroom use in 2013.

The program went well and raised a lot of interest, but with the end of this pilot and other local literacy projects coming to a natural close, Chris and his wife made plans to move back to Reading to take care of ageing parents and keep up better with growing grandchildren. Before they left Senegal, however (by container ship), Barbara Trudell invited them to work with her Advocacy and Alliance Building team (AAB). Chris does not believe that this just ‘happened to coincide’ with the USAID Senegal push to expand investment in education, and the groundwork laid by the EMiLe program. These factors, along with the mission of AAB (to advocate for multilingual education by building alliances between organizations and governmental entities with a vested interest) coalesced in a perfect educational storm that would help bring about change in Senegal on a far broader scale than any of them could have imagined.

Because of SIL LEAD’s long-standing partnership with AAB, Chris became aware of our organization, and when he was asked to work with us as a consultant, he jumped at the chance. He’s since helped with teacher training, materials development, and curriculum development, as well as coming on board as a Certified Bloom Trainer, working at times with local publishing houses in Senegal to increase their capacity to develop materials in new languages—such as with leveled readers.

Chris leads Bloom training for ADEA in Abidjan.

Currently, Chris is just about to start work on a project for the World Bank, developing a curriculum model for field education specialists, using two languages in Niger. This isn’t an SIL LEAD project—it’s with our partner AAB—but given the amount of crossover between the two organizations, it’s understandable that Chris at times gets “hopelessly confused,” as he says, “about which is which.” It’s a testament to the fact that the work we’re doing with multilingual education is too large for any one person or organization. It takes more than just a village to raise and educate a child, after all, but rather a world-wide web of villages and organizations where everyone shares the belief that it’s the individuals that matter.

“So much of my appreciation for God working in me is about him working in me as an individual,” Chris says, “So, for me, making relationships with individuals all along the way is so important. The big picture is great, but so much of the big picture is built with lots of little details—and those details are usually people. When I think of Senegal, I think of people whether it’s a child in a class, a friend, or an education Inspector.”

From an early life of privilege in a first-rate educational system, Chris has come full circle—bringing his decades of training and experience to bear, to help provide quality education to children who would otherwise not have that privilege.