I was highly offended by your editorial in the August edition of the Teacher (‘Ideals get in reality’s way”). You cynically suggest that we accept our lot and reconcile ourselves to the inevitable.
As an educator in the Eastern Cape, I will never accept the low standards of work done by our provincial education department. I often wonder how officials in Bisho sleep at night knowing that there are pensioned teachers out there who haven’t seen a cent of the money they are owed.
These heartless officials in Bisho, who lose paperwork relating to teacher’s salaries and allowances, who only work for an hour a day and who couldn’t give a damn about the people who pay their salaries, need to be removed from their positions.
It isn’t good enough to have ‘a classroom, a desk and a competent teacher”, as you say in your editorial. We also need government officials who put people first and care about the education of our nation’s children.
I am willing to bet a lot of money that Eastern Cape education department officials send their children to private schools because they won’t accept the low standards of education at government schools.
As a nation, we need to insist that all government officials — in every department of government — send their children to government schools. Then we’ll see an improvement in the quality of education all South African children get.
— Esther Madikwe
Port Elizabeth
On the receiving end of the cane
I was at this school in 1999 and there was a teacher who was always angry, always burning like fire and hotter than chilli. He was also the deputy principal.
Every Monday morning he took our class for a double period. He would come into class and tell us to stand on one side of the room. He would ask questions, and if we failed to answer, he would beat us. His beating was so harsh it was more like getting three beatings.
One day the whole group of students decided to trick him. We took an onion and smeared it on our hands. We did this straight after assembly, before he taught us. He came into the class to do his usual job. The onion had worked very fast and our hands had swollen up like balloons. We showed him our hands. He became so afraid by what he saw because he thought it was because of his beatings.
For a while he stopped beating us. But one day he discovered our trick. It was like hell because he started beating us harder than before. It was as if he was suffering from stress or was depressed. He did this to us for three years.
It was very odd, because he was liked by many students at school, including our class. Now that I’m out of the school, I like him like hell. He was my best teacher ever. He is also my dad.
— Zinziswa Rabe
Umtata
Who’s ignorant?
Our esteemed Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, may be be very clever but he sometimes sounds like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
One thing that keeps annoying me is his response to the fact that so many students are excluded from school because they cannot pay school fees. Asmal keeps saying that the problem is that parents don’t know their rights. His solution is to run programmes to educate these parents about their rights.
But things are far more complicated than that. For one thing, even if parents march into a school and demand their child should attend, there are many quiet ways teachers can torture that child and make him hate school.
Even more important is the fact that the schools need school funds to function. Here the government needs to do a lot of thinking, because they are supporting our poor schools very little. They tell us we need to fundraise. But when so many in our communities have no money for fees, how will they ever have money to support our fundraising activities?
Instead of pretending that the ignorance of parents is the reason for exclusion, Asmal should face the reality that the government is failing our poor communities. A better solution would be for the department to sponsor each and every child whose parents cannot afford the fees. This should include money for transport and school uniforms as well.
— Justice Mhlongo
Limpopo