If learners had been trained from the beginning simply to think, many more would drop out of the sites of miseducation we continue to call our school.
There’s room for everyone to help a floundering ship to find its direction.
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/ 10 November 2009
A few months ago, I spent time in a convent, living with nuns. True Story! Over a seven day period, I bonded with aging German nuns, who marvelled at the fact that I wore bright clothing and braided my hair in different styles almost daily. Most of them weren’t conversant in English and it would be a euphemism to describe my German as limited. As such, the majority of my interactions with these nuns were non-verbal — a warm smile to acknowledge someone in the corridors, a wave to signal my departure from the dining hall and so on. Come to think of it, it’s surprising how easy it is to communicate kindness. The day-to-day exchanges, in their simplicity and at times, silence, made an enduring impression on me. I tried, from my secular worldview, to understand what had motivated these women to make such a radical and politically defiant choice. One of the things that clearly stood out as I witness pensioned nuns shuffle about, cooking, cleaning and caring for one another, was that the value of service is absolutely central to their daily existence.
My entire high school history curriculum comprised of European history; the World Wars and a yearly smidgen of South African history. The beginning of South African time always neatly coincided with 1652, the year of Van Riebeeck’s landing. For the longest time, I subconsciously believed that nothing of historical significance took place on the African continent (except of course in pseudo-Arabic Egypt) prior to colonialism.