Philippa Garson
CLASS STRUGGLE
Two very different education “stories” dominated the news last week, both encapsulating the bizarre contradictions of this land.
The first was the findings of the Curriculum Review committee, which in measured tones discussed its recommendations at a lengthy and fairly highbrow technical briefing.
The second was the less palatable and frankly frightening news that students in Alexandra and KwaThema, as well as at several schools in the Northern Province and North West, were running amok, that gun-toting members of the Congress of South African Students were garnering ever more power to compel students to fulfil their sinister and subterranean agendas, and that riots were erupting in several Northern Province schools.
The scenes described in Alex were reminiscent of the explosive conflicts that occurred there in the early 1990s and 1980s. The same could be said for the happenings at the University of Durban- Westville, where the level of conflict between police and students has reached the same scary intensity of the 1980s.
With the 24th anniversary of the Soweto Uprisings almost upon us, there is a horrible irony in the fact that we seem to be moving closer to, rather than further away from, an all-too-reminiscent climate of chaos and violence in many of our education institutions. Very much with us today is the “our lives are worthless” mentality that propels young people to throw petrol bombs and destroy property in random acts of destruction, with their future prospects the last thing on their minds.
Where, then, given this prevailing sense of hopelessness, coupled with a sick ruthlessness, among youth, do plans for improving outcomes-based education delivery come in?
What principal, threatened with death for asking a student to wear school uniform, or laughed at for begging students to stop smoking dagga in the toilets and return to class, gives a damn about whether Curriculum 2005 is transformed into Curriculum 21 or not?
Or what pupil, infected with HIV, fearful of being raped, or wondering which weapon to take to class each day, knows or cares what any of it means for his or her education?
All of this is symbolic of the broader societal landscape of mismatch and contradiction, where relatively sophisticated policy formation and government processes at national level fail dismally to align with the rough situation on the ground. These recent surges of violence and student unrest in schools are surely a wake-up call to the government to stop forming new policies and start sorting out the enormous problems of basic education administration at school, district and provincial levels as priority number one.
Much of the student activity may be written off as “mindless gangsterism” as Minister of Education Kader Asmal termed it, but were it not for the mounting sense of neglect and grievance among youth and breakdown in relations between them and their teachers, the “mindless gangsters” would not be able to ruin the show with such ease.
The violent happenings in recent days have had the effect of rendering important policy matters somewhat trivial in their loftiness.
When grievances about shortage of textbooks, lack of support of district officials, exclusions because of unpaid fees and ongoing conflict around money issues at school are escalating on a daily basis into clashes with police and resulting in loss of life, urgent steps must be taken to oil the wheels of delivery (read crisis-management) at ground level. Asmal hinted at this when he ditched that increasingly hollow- sounding and much-used clich “the culture of learning” at a press briefing the other day, saying he preferred to talk instead of a “habit of learning”.
“A culture of learning takes scores of years to evolve, but a habit of learning can start very quickly,” he said.
Just how one changes the prevailing habit of defiance and disillusionment into one of diligence and learning is the difficult part.
But at least there appears to be a new spirit of realism and tempered expectation about just how much can be achieved when shoddy management, moral confusion and resource shortage govern our daily educational realities.
If only the education administration had mobilised more effectively and exclusively around these issues several years ago, instead of spending millions of rands and energy in a stubborn rush to impose an ill- devised, complex and confusing new curriculum on an education system still in the throes of a decades-long crisis.