Apartheid perpetuated
It was with some consternation that I read Warwick Taylor’s article describing the new science curriculum (“The opposite of science”, October 15).
As an author of textbooks on agricultural science (a grade 10-12 subject popular in schools in rural provinces such as the Eastern Cape), I had just sent off my new curriculum comments in the hope that agricultural science was an isolated case.
It was sobering to discover that a mainstream subject such as science also has a new curriculum that, as Taylor’s article states, is rushed, fraught with content and grammatical errors, badly sequenced so that pre-knowledge topics follow more advanced ones, riddled with contradictions between parts and clearly written by inexperienced people.
I saw a similar lack of academic competence earlier this year when study-guide writing caused me to look closely at recent agricultural-science examination papers. I found serious contradictions among the National Curriculum Statement (NCS; that is, the document that describes the curriculum currently in use for each subject), the 2009 Examination Guidelines (a document issued by the national education department), the exam exemplars and exam papers.
The 2009 exam guidelines document introduced a number of new concepts not covered by the NCS and therefore not included in the available textbooks. The 2009 exam exemplars and papers had questions that covered some of these new additions.
Because textbooks are written and approved for a particular curriculum and then purchased by schools with limited resources, randomly changing the curriculum through “exam guidelines” is, to me, a breach of the contract between teachers and students and the external examining authority.
There are also a number of instances where there are exam questions on content covered by neither the NCS nor the exam guidelines. Some of these exam questions come directly from textbooks that give interpretations beyond the curriculum.
I know this because I wrote some of the material in question. The author/s of the 2009 exemplars and exam papers used textbooks to set the exam papers and did not check the textbooks against the curriculum content. This means that students who did not read the additional material of a particular textbook could not answer certain exam questions. This is another breach of the contract between teachers and students and the external examining authority.
Furthermore, the exam papers/exemplars contain nonsensical errors. Here is one brief example: “Translate the illustrated bar graph above into a pie graph.” The bar graph shows “number of cows” versus “milk yield (litres)”. This data cannot be presented as a pie chart because pie charts are used to show the parts that make up a whole.
Our schoolgoers are being set up to fail. The documents that link the state to the teachers and students — the curricula and the examination papers — are being written by amateurs and printed without editing or peer review. This will soon result in a loss of confidence in the state education system.
I would like to repeat Taylor’s plea to “anyone in authority” that “our country and [science] teachers deserve better”. What is the alternative? Perhaps, for those who can afford it, it is private schools that offer internationally recognised curricula and examinations. In this way, the people in authority may well perpetuate the educational class divide promoted by apartheid. — Name withheld to protect fellow authors and publisher
No Love lost over deployment
I have no doubt Janet Love is a person of high integrity, intelligence and ability, as the group of academics, activists and lawyers state in their letter (Mail & Guardian, October 22). But this misses the point. The issue here is not Janet Love. It is cadre deployment.
Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary general, announced at the party’s recent national general council that Love had been “deployed” to the Human Rights Commission (HRC), which he referred to as a “strategic” institution. He gave this as the reason for Love’s resignation from the ANC’s national executive committee.
Mantashe’s statement is damning. It is common cause that when the ANC deploys cadres, they are expected to put the party’s interests first. As the ANC president himself declared, the ANC is more important than “even the Constitution of this country”.
If Mantashe was wrong about Love’s deployment, she needs to explain why she did not immediately contradict him and set the record straight? That was surely the moment to resist being labelled a “deployed” cadre.
Perhaps it was too politically risky to go head-to-head with Mantashe. It is interesting that Love herself has remained silent, but that the group of signatories has denied on her behalf that she is a “deployed cadre”.
When it comes to cadre deployment, the ANC wins, not the individual. Just ask Vusi Pikoli or Andrew Feinstein (who is, ironically, one of the signatories to the letter). Both found themselves “redeployed” when they allowed their respective constitutional duties to trump their obligations to the party.
The signatories to the letter should also explain why they sprang to the defence of only one of the ANC’s “deployees” to the HRC. They must obviously agree that the rest of the “deployees” are there to do what “cadres” are required to do — to serve the ANC’s interests rather than the Constitution.
The signatories need to answer another question: Why should the public have any confidence in the independence of commissioners whom the ANC itself describes as its “deployees” in “strategic” institutions? By selectively defending cadre deployment, depending on the individuals involved, the signatories to the letter actually disguise and exacerbate the core problem.
It is time to acknowledge that patronage and cadre deployment lie at the root of cronyism, corruption and the failed state. This is the crux of the matter, not the personal attributes of individual deployees. — Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance
Mbeki racist?
Why doesn’t Thabo Mbeki just come out and say he is a racist?
I note in his musings (October 15) that he questions the meaning of the word “xenophobia” and asks why the violence in the so-called xenophobia attacks wasn’t directed at whites.
In doing so he again reveals his deeply racist attitude. Is he saying that whites are foreigners? Is he agitating for blacks to see them so?
It is in line with his racist “I am an African” piece of work and with policies he oversaw while president.
How many times must whites be subjected to this kind of thinking? When will he stop behaving like a denialist agitator and accept that whites who were born here, and those who have immigrated, are South Africans?
His racist way of thinking pervades government and is a deeply divisive issue.
It also accounts for the increase in racial tension, which many of us feel, as mentioned by Professor Jonathan Jansen. It seems Mbeki, referring constantly to our racial differences, does not want a peaceful and integrated future for our country.
He is a malevolent, lingering presence and the sooner he disappears into obscurity the better for us all, and the sooner we can try to start looking to the future instead of looking back 300 years and playing the race card as he and his acolytes do. — SS
Who’s afraid of PhDs?
The article “Hard choices over doctorates” (October 15) and the letter “Don’t be threatened by PhDs” (October 22) raise fundamental questions about the role of PhDs in knowledge production and in rapidly developing economies.
South Korea, Singapore and other countries were able to develop their economies rapidly by, for instance, supporting doctoral-level training aligned to the needs of economic development and recruiting graduates into government and private-sector jobs.
Notwithstanding current job-market issues, I am not convinced that the South African government, the private sector and other potential employers (outside academia) are serious about employing qualified PhDs, South African or non-South African.
When they do employ them, I don’t think they know what to do with them. I know of many social science PhDs struggling to find employment or frustrated with their jobs after a few months. If there was a need for PhDs, they wouldn’t be unemployed and those I know would not leave their jobs unless there is something employers fear about employing those with doctorates.
I have been to interviews where employers sought to hire PhDs, only to find out later that they had hired a candidate fresh out of university, without a doctorate.
Having gone through a South African social science doctoral programme myself, I am certain that PhDs acquire crucial skills, including research, writing and critical-thinking and problem-solving skills that are very scarce in many sectors.
Additionally, if the South African government was serious about developing the economy by employing PhDs, incentives, even modest ones, would exist for the retention of those few PhD graduates from other African countries.
It would process work permits quickly (I have been waiting for mine for almost five months), recruit on campus and specifically target PhDs, and develop networks to allow even those who leave the country after graduating to contribute to researching and solving the country’s challenges. The government and private sector are doing little, if anything at all, in this regard. — Hamadziripi Tamukamoyo (PhD)
Blaming the victims
In an otherwise interesting piece on jobs and poverty, Milisuthando Bongela makes some sweeping statements about the so-called culture of entitlement in South Africa, stating that “people have been known to get pregnant or infect themselves with HIV because of the social grants they receive” (Friday, October 15).
First, research into teen pregnancies in South Africa has shown a decline in teenage fertility for many years before, during and after the introduction of the child-support grants.
There is no evidence of an increase in teen births since the grant was introduced — in fact, there is a low uptake of the grant by teenagers and a rise in teenagers who terminate pregnancies. This information, from a government survey, suggests not enough young women are getting the grant. Often it’s the poorest who fail to do so because they lack the required documentation.
The writer’s crass throwaway line is in line with a tendency to scapegoat young women and their so-called moral decay and greed. This clouds the truer picture – that we have become obsessed about sexuality, particularly the sexuality of young women, because it’s easier to pick on them than to acknowledge the complex social forces that shape teen pregnancy.
Second, while there is anecdotal evidence that people living with HIV may knowingly manipulate their CD4 counts to remain eligible for a disability grant, to suggest that people become infected to get a grant many years later is unsupported by any real evidence.
It reinforces stigma, discrimination and notions of HIV-positive people as antisocial.
When the chips are down, it’s easier to blame the victim than to ask tough questions about poverty, helplessness and our culpability in a system that has effectively abandoned the poor. — Pierre Brouard, Pretoria
M&G prostitutes itself
Was it really necessary to put that specific porn picture on your cover of October 22? Couldn’t you have tried to break the mould by perhaps featuring an explicit pic of some gay male porn instead of the garden-variety sexualisation, degradation and objectification of women’s Âbodies? For a moment there I thought: since when does Rapport come out on a Friday, and where in Goddess’s name is the Mail & Guardian?
Many thanks to the patient Fish Hoek Pick n Pay staff who had to help me find the M&G underneath all that obvious whore make-up.
Did it help with the circulation? No, not that kind, the number kind. Did it? Can we expect to see the M&G on the corner in some fishnets regularly from now on? — Karien van der Westhuizen, Cape Town