Over the past years there has been growing concern about the loss of indigenous or local knowledge. SANParks has together with the Wilderness Foundation taken up the challenge of preserving indigenous knowledge. Through wilderness camps and trail activities, young people are exposed to the indigenous knowledge of wise elders who act as teachers and interpreters of nature.
Premier Sibusiso Ndebele, provincial education minister Ina Cronje and Durban mayor Obed Mlaba plan to eliminate adult illiteracy in KwaZulu-Natal by March 7 2008. A task team has been established to present a plan of action to achieve this.
The debate on the best way to teach children to be literate still rages on. The phonics versus whole -language debate has been occupying educationalists since the 60s when the whole- language approach emerged as a new way to teach literacy. A dual approach to teaching literacy could however be the answer.
The legacy of apartheid has left schools in rural areas in a poor state contributing to poverty in these areas. The Emerging Voices report stresses that education must be at the heart of any poverty-reduction programme and looks at the need to improve the quality of education through the participation of rural communities.
Lying outside her hut on a tattered mat, 20-year-old Maria struggled with her breathing as she tried to explain why she and her five orphaned nieces and nephews in her charge had not eaten. Maria was dying from Aids-related diseases, as well as from severe malnutrition. "I had to sell my plot of land to survive," she said through her gasps for breaths.
A study conducted by the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town and the University of Michigan, started tracking about 4 800 youths in 2002 to gauge their opportunities and challenges in democratic South Africa. TheTeacher explores some of the findings of this study.
According to a paper by University of KwaZulu-Natal academics Professor John Aitchison and Anne Harley, the government has been accused of misleading the public for 10 years about its progress in combating adult illiteracy.
Testy relations between China and Japan were further strained this week when Tokyo signalled its intention to explore gas fields in the contested seabed between the two countries. The Japanese Trade Ministry started accepting bids from companies to drill in a region just east of what Tokyo describes as a median line separating the countries’ exclusive economic zones.
More than half of Turkey’s young female population has no schooling, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Females account for the vast majority of the seven-million people believed to be illiterate in the predominantly Muslim state. Under Turkey’s Education Minister, Huseyin Celik, this inequity is however being addressed
As hopes that the next pope will come from Africa were increasingly dismissed as unlikely last week, and Nigeria’s Cardinal Francis Arinze was criticised as not being a strong enough contender, a dark-horse candidate, capable of bridging the divide between the Europeans and the Latin American Roman Catholic cardinals, appeared to be emerging in the shape of the Patriarch of Portugal, Jose da Cruz Policarpo.