Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Education - We've lost the plot

I don't have kids so some would ask what I have to bleat about education?  Well I'll tell you!  Our entire education system as well as our entire culture are just in shambles and yet those in the know with small voices (figuratively) can do little to change the tide of devastation.  Our country is ripe for a new revolution, but sadly the only revolution currently taking place is heading in the wrong direction as well. 

We are 20 years post the dawn of democracy and what do we have to show for it?  A 75% pass rate.  Mind you they don't even tell us how many of those who failed have done so for the second or third time, so technically that should push the figures down.  Even more shocking is how few children that start in grade 1 actually matriculate. 

But is it only the school system that is to blame?  I don't think so but I'll come back to the schools in case you were thinking I'd spare them.  No education begins at home.  I'm no idiot I know that in today's society in most cases both parents HAVE to work in order to make ends meet if you are in the lower classes, but there are those who could afford to stay home that choose to work.  Ja right, women's lib, I hear you, BUT!....... I know what a key role my mother played in my education. 

Was my mother a teacher?  Nope, but the one thing she did teach me is how to think for myself and not only that, how to learn by myself.  My mom nurtured childish curiosity not by giving me the answers to all the questions I had about life and school work, but with some simple words, "Go and look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia."  Mom knew full well that the moment I sat down and looked up a word in our beautiful Readers Digest dictionary's that I would not leave the study for a good hour.  The pictures drew me in, captured my imagination and fed my hunger to learn.  What do we do nowadays?  There is no time for parental guidance, so we push the kids through their homework with only completing the bare minimum that needed to be done. 

Okay so now I hear you say, "but what about the rural areas where there are no resources?"  Well Mr President, if you had taken the money spent on Nkandla and rather spent that on rural school buildings, our country would be richer for it.  There are a ton of ways that we could improve rural education without having to increase the staff compliment, like video's, computer access, education TV and so much more.  We don't need more teachers, we need more tools. 

But lets go back to teachers for a moment.  Now if you consider that most likely the teachers teaching your child today probably also only completed schooling with the bare minimum education and then probably skidded through teachers training college, then how in the world are they supposed to deliver top quality education to our children and get them to excel?  Is there a requirement that in order to teach you need to have an 80% pass rate?  Nope!  Then don't get me started on unions and strikes!!!!!

The worst part for me about how poorly children are passing these days is that they never figure out what their aptitude is inclined towards, so they finish school and take the wrong jobs and make the rest of the population unhappy and that does affect me directly, so again, yes I have a right to bleat!

So what are the answers?  I don't have them because I did not study to be an educator but an accountant.  What I do know is that in the multitude of counsellors, good counsellors, comes wisdom.  So if you don't want to take advice from a South African white person, then go to another country where they are getting it right and ask them how to sort out this mess.