Author Archives: Pip

Is South Africa’s education system in crisis?  This was the topic that Sizwe and I were asked to speak on at a debate in Newtown last Thursday night alongside Phuta Tseki, the Cosatu Gauteng Provincial chairman.  The debate was hosted by CoolPolitics, an organisation which was established to become a credible voice of the youth in an age where youth is marginalised and seen by many as an uninvolved, apathetic lot.

After a heated discussion about the irrelevance of the curriculum content for preparing young people for real life and, more specifically, employment, I asked the audience how we can make sure what we’re teaching is useful? What experiences and skills can we impart that will open opportunities for the individuals we’re trying to educate?  For me, this is the question we need to keep in mind if we want to make sure that “education” is relevant to real life.  This isn’t just important to the content of the education system but it also should guide the programs we run alongside formal schooling and the way we support the individual young people we know personally.

Our schools fall short because in the vast majority of cases the teacher’s role is simply to deliver the content of what is learnt, and that’s determined by a text book.  As a result, we fill our learners minds but we don’t inspire them.

As Gareth Cliff recently said in his letter to the government, “Education is a disaster. We’re the least literate and numerate country in Africa. Zimbabwe produces better school results and turns out smarter kids than we do. Our youth aren’t unemployed, they’re unemployable. Outcomes-based-education, Teachers’ Unions and an attitude of mediocrity that discourages excellence have reduced us to a laughing stock. Our learners can’t spell, read, add or subtract. What are all these people going to do? Become President? There’s only one job like that. We need clever people, not average or stupid ones. the failure of the Education Department happened under your watch. Someone who writes Matric now hadn’t even started school under the Apartheid regime, so you cannot blame anyone but yourselves for this colossal cock-up. Fix it before three-quarters of our matrics end up begging on Oxford Road. Reward schools and teachers who deliver great pass rates and clever students into the system. Fire the teachers who march and neglect their classrooms.”

But there’s a simple solution to this: a re-conceptualisation of the teacher’s role from information provider to inspiration creator.  It’s about sparking a passion for learning that lasts a lifetime rather than simply as long as the learner remains within the school yard. It’s about making education driven by the learner rather than a teacher who is simply trying to fill them with facts they can regurgitate verbatim.  It’s about creating enduring knowledge rather than test-taking abilities.

It’s about tying the content of what’s taught, and the skills required to learn it, to their own goals for the future.

It’s about expecting a lot from from our young people – and holding them to those high expectations – creating an attitude of excellence rather than an acceptance of mediocrity.

It’s about making individuals invest in their own learning: making them realise the personal benefit to themselves and showing them their own potential to achieve. Very simply, it’s about creating a situation where learners both want to learn and believe they can.

When young people take control of their own learning, they’re learning much more than the content of a text book – they’re learning how to learn and, in doing so, taking control of their own future.

A big thanks to CoolPolitics for hosting such an inspiring debate!