Will their children should get an equal start in life? Four parents express their views. Pat Sidley reports
THE routine business of choosing a school for a six- year-old has become a taxing dilemma for South African parents.
Between the expectation of “a better life for all” and the terror of “falling standards”, sending a child out into the world no longer means choosing the nearest school.
Patterns are beginning to emerge. Parents who are already privileged will make decisions which ensure continued privilege for the next generation. Those who have been most damaged by poverty and oppression can’t – – for many reasons — make use of the choices now available. But a significant number in the middle are seizing the chance to ensure that their children will do better than their parents. The Mail & Guardian interviewed four parents with varying options across the schooling and socio-economic spectrums: a black urban township professional mother, a white professional mother in the more comfortable northern suburbs of Johannesburg, a black professional father living in a racially-mixed area, and a black domestic worker. In a truly egalitarian society, their children — all at school-entry age — would be getting an equal start in life.
RAYMOND BUHLALU is a professional working for a large multinational computer company. The family lives in Highlands, a racially-mixed Johannesburg suburb next to Yeoville. His daughter, Sibongile (six), who attended a private nursery school, is now in Grade One at Observatory Girls’ Primary School, a “state-aided school” — the type that used to be called “Model C”. Buhlalu has not studied the Education Ministry’s recently released white paper in detail, but he has a good idea of its broad contents, and firm ideas of what he wants for his daughter. And he has an even better idea of what he doesn’t want changed: Model Cs. As soon as he gets a hint that the quality of his daughter’s education is in any way suffering from changes to the system, he will move her into private education — an option he has considered already. Asked about his decisions on his daughter’s education, he said: “I am driven by the belief that education in the private or semi-private schools has to be better than in the townships.” He modestly describes his daughter as having “a little bit of intelligence” and wants her in a school where she can press ahead rapidly. The fits, slow starts and general disruption in township education worry him.The quality of education provided in the townships has dropped markedly, even from the days he was at school there. The teacher-pupil-parent relationship has changed for the worse as well.
Buhlalu was educated in Natal and in Soweto, matriculating in 1974 at the Morris Isaacson High School. Finding a place in a university at the start of the turmoil in black education and politics caused further delays. He’s having none of this for his daughter.
Her present school provides good teaching and adequate supervision for homework. The class size is 21, and monthly fees are R120. “I am only slightly better off than my parents were. I would like to see her moving through life with ease and the support structures I didn’t have. I want her to go further and it must be quickly too,” he says.
SARAH HADEBE (not her real name) is a photographer working on a PWV newspaper. Her son, Bogosi (six), is at Nonofelo Primary in Soweto. She has no intention of moving him into the suburbs. But if there are no tangible and worthwhile changes within a year, such that the school’s facilities and general education approximate those in the “suburbs”, she will be making some forthright demands of the PWV government. Bogosi’s education presently costs R10 a year — a fee Hadebe could decline to pay if she could not afford it.
She is satisfied with the education Bogosi is getting at Nonfelo. Besides, to send him to the suburbs every day would involve difficulties like transport and after- school care, while, as things stand, a family network takes care of him after school and while Hadebe is working.
The child would like to go to school in the suburbs with some of his friends and relatives, but Hadebe herself has no desire to move out of Soweto where she was educated. However, she says: “We should have the same facilities as the white schools.” And if these facilities are not delivered in, say, a year, then she believes the state should address the problem, possibly by busing children in Soweto to suburban schools. She is not keen on the notion of better-qualified white teachers teaching in Soweto schools. For one thing she does not accept that they are better qualified, and she feels black teachers should be employed. Still, “I do not want my child to get the same education I got … and if I see the education in the township is deteriorating, then I will just have to put him into a better school.”
JOAN HOLMES (not her real name), who lives in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, sends Daniella (six) to an “elitist” (her word) girls’ private school in Johannesburg: Roedean.She has never seriously considered a government schooling option; her decision to send Daniella to Roedean has been affirmed by the general state of education at the moment.”I think there is going to be a crisis in education, not necessarily within two or three years, but within five,” she says. “I am convinced that the level of education in government schools will decline. And I don’t want her in a class of 50 or 60 kids.” She is unconvinced by the argument that the optimum number of children in a class is around 35. The total number of pupils in her Cape primary school was 140.She says she has thought about the charge that a private education is elitist, and thinks this is true. “But I am prepared to counteract the elitist thing at home. One of the reasons people give against private schooling is that children should learn to interact more broadly”, in an environment more closely resembling the real world.”There is something to be said for this argument, but the charge of elitism isn’t enough to counter the lowering of standards.”She doesn’t believe the state should continue subsidising private schools. “It would obviously be better for me, but, logically and in my heart, I don’t think this should be.”
JOHANNA SIMELANE is a Johannesburg domestic worker living in Yeoville, earning around R500 a month. Her five-year-old son, Sanele (known as Nikkie), goes to nursery school in Orange Farm. She doesn’t know where to send him for his primary school education. While her options may have broadened with the white paper, her attitude shows she does not believe they have changed at all.”I don’t know what to do. I think I will have to take him home (to Nqutu in kwaZulu/Natal) because I can’t manage with the money.”Nikkie likes his school at Orange Farm, although it had no chairs. But the problems there are increasing. The relatives who have been caring for him during the week are not going to be able to next year. At “home” in Nqutu there would be no school fees; her two other sons are there, and Simelane believes it would cost her a great deal of money — which she does not have — to keep her son in Yeoville and find a school for him there. Simelane has had a tough life and doesn’t want the same for Nikkie. In 1976 she was forcibly removed from the family home in Paulpietersberg and dumped in Nqutu. She only reached Standard Two at her mission school and is partially literate — but only in Zulu. She cannot read Nikkie a book in English.”I want him to learn and not to suffer like I did,” she says.