What took place this week at the Department of Education’s 123 Schoeman Street headquarters, soon to be renamed after Sol T Plaatjie, was profoundly significant. A team of educationists was given the platform to pronounce judgement on one of the government’s most flashy and therefore politically laden flagship projects – Curriculum 2005 – in the presence of the media.
After a three-month research and review process, the team proceeded in a systematic, if most tactful, way to tear Curriculum 2005 to pieces.
Although endorsing outcomes-based education, the team has found that what is being taught is in fact a shallow, misconceived and jargon-laden version of it.
Not only was the curriculum badly designed, but teachers had not been properly taught how to teach it.
In a brave and outspoken report, the team recommended the phasing out of an essentially incomprehensible curriculum and a phasing in of a more streamlined, content-driven one – in essence a return to a more reasonable and less elaborate approach to learning that restores the three Rs to their time-honoured centrality in the classroom.
When he appointed the team in February Minister of Education Kader Asmal was at pains to show that this was simply another step in the ongoing review of Curriculum 2005, that it was in fact due to the government’s confidence in it that allowed it to introspect, or more pertinently, open up Curriculum 2005 and its implementation process to inspection by a group of experts with no blatant vested interests. (Although some have links to the department, the group of educationists are independent people who laboured without pay on the report.)
Clearly, however, Asmal’s ambitions to make his mark by effecting some visible improvements to the ailing education system during his term of office forced him to take heed of the deafening chorus of “we don’t understand” from teachers. This has been the case ever since Curriculum 2005, lauded by government in messianic tones as the vehicle which would propel apartheid-deformed South Africans missile-like into the future, was shoved into their laps.
While Asmal may not have been able to say it, the implementation of Curriculum 2005 has been pretty disastrous. Although it has instilled a new “buzz” in the staff rooms about the learning process, it has confused and confounded them and failed to rectify a legacy of inadequate teacher training.
The review process has clearly demoralised education officials. They have actually performed a miraculous feat in training almost every one of the country’s teachers in Curriculum 2005, and producing reams and reams of learning materials. Not surprisingly, they are burnt out and less than enthusiastic at the thought of starting again.
But there is also a sense of reluctant pride among them at the significance of the process of criticism. Despite fears that they would reject the report, department officials, by and large, appear to have given it their tacit, if rather grumpy, support.
“This is a warts-and-all review. You may not get this elsewhere,” said Deputy Director General Ihron Rensburg.
Asmal too was most chipper. Like a true politician he has artfully steered the criticisms to his advantage.
“When you venture into a new area you must learn from experience. As part of our confidence in ourselves we must scrutinise everything we do,” he said, adding: “This is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.”
He has already endorsed the spirit of the report, given his comments that the proposals are realistic, “not suitable for Outer Mongolia”, which “probably has more resources than we do”.
But the resource implications of changing course are nevertheless enormous. Already millions of government money have been wasted in teaching things badly and hurriedly and millions more will have to be spent on new materials, on better and more intensive training and on ongoing review.
Asmal said better financial planning in education would lead to more rational spending to meet basic educational needs and that resources would no longer be chopped from vulnerable places.
But it is clear that the process has to go forward slowly and that any plans for rapid overhaul must be done away with.
Most countries with far more resources than ours take decades to develop their curricula.
Critically important is to get a national plan off the ground for the retraining of teachers, the kind of retraining that will address some of the legacies of Bantu education at the same time as giving them something new – hopefully some sound and simple teaching methodologies.
Another challenge will be to tamper once again with the hearts and minds of teachers. There will probably be cries of “oh no, not again” from a stressed and worn-out teaching corps who have just begun to get a slippery grasp of the department’s 66 specific outcomes, whatever they may be. But rather this course than the blind allegiance to the garden path, which leads to who knows where.
In being brave enough to open itself up to scrutiny and in being prepared to change in the interests of the people of this country, the education department must be congratulated on setting an example to other government departments. After all, a successful future for our country hinges on our ability to educate our children.