Last month, I briefly traced the evolution of the outcomes-based education (OBE) movement over the past 35 years: from its focus on "expanding the conditions of success" in schools and classrooms during the 1970s and 1980s, to the strongly learner-centred, future-focused, personally empowering emphasis of "the five Cs" in today’s "transformational" models.
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where you should be. Now put the foundations under them." What I like about these words by Henry David Thoreau is that he reminds us of the value of having dreams to work towards.
As a generation of young Swazi women ended a five-year vow of chastity in a traditional ceremony this week, health officials are debating the impact of the custom on reducing the risk of HIV infection.
After 47 days on a hunger strike, Iranians Azita Aslami and Mohammad Mehdi Neshat may finally get what they want: a residence permit to stay in The Netherlands. The Dutch government says Iran is a safe country, but Aslami and Neshat don’t agree. On June 30, eight Iranian asylum seekers had embarked on a hunger strike to protest the Dutch asylum-seeking procedure.
Richard Maponya’s face glows when he talks about his latest project, a new mall he says is the first one-stop shopping facility in Soweto. "This excites me more than anything else I have done. It will be an achievement of a dream and it will create so many job opportunities." If you didn’t know that the Maponya name is synonymous with black business, you might think that the mall is his first venture.
Voices of opposition are mounting to some of the changes to education laws proposed by the Department of Education (DoE). The Education Laws Amendment Bill, which was presented to Parliament’s education portfolio committee earlier this month, seeks to amend certain aspects of the South African Schools Act (Sasa) and the Employment of Educators Act.
When European settlers landed in South Africa, they hardly saw the locals as cutting-edge scientists and health practitioners. In fact the indigenous people harboured a treasure trove of remedies for all kinds of diseases, knowledge of how to farm effectively and principles of good nutrition.
The George W Bush administration may like to see Iran face sanctions for its nuclear aspirations, but the political mood at the United Nations suggests that such punishment is not what the world community is ready for. ”We don’t think it will be helpful to bring the issue to the Security Council,” the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Wang Guangya, told reporters recently.
Women’s month is a good time for us guys to strike back at that part of the women’s movement that says it is acceptable for women to slap men who have made them sufficiently angry. For a society striving for less violence, it is amazing how blasé we are about women smacking men who arrive late, cheat on them or generally behave like assholes.
Three high-level South African creatives, all of whom have returned from overseas agencies, are set to launch a new creative shop in Cape Town. Noel Cottrell, Andrew Whitehouse and Justin Gomes have teamed up to form FoxP2, an agency that aims to rival Net#work BBDO.