Free HandWe don't need no thought control |
Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone. We might get a better education staying at home.
JOHANNESBURG - Media reports last week highlighted the declining relevance of the British education system. Most British school-leavers are underprepared for the workplace. Now, Whitehall must rethink the education syllabi and determine how youngsters can contribute more creatively and constructively to the British economy.
One wonders if South Africa isn't in a similar position. How far are we from having an ideal education paradigm to meet our shifting economic, cultural, intellectual and spiritual needs?
As a concerned parent, one's adamant our kids, particularly at high school, learn loads of useless facts without developing sufficient life skills and lateral thinking abilities. Great emphasis is placed on using the brain's left hemisphere, learning by rote and impersonating a crash-test dummy. Perhaps we need to blast rock music into the ears of dreary educationists and politicians to remove the mock-Victorian cobwebs from their brains. Here, one provocative British band springs to mind.
Thirty years ago, Pink Floyd released their album, The Wall, a stark and part-savage satire of themes close to the heart of Roger Waters, the principal lyricist and singer. Listening to this record today, one can't help realising the more things change, the more they stay the same ... like our inadequate and perplexing education system. Now, one is back to singing, "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom / Teachers leave the kids alone".
Being young and carefree 30 years ago, one didn't realise the role of aspiring writer might be complemented by that of an after-hours tutor and coach for at least a decade. For many of us, despite our tarnished mental mettle, we've been back at school for ten, 15 or even 20 years. In between family meals and discussions, favourite TV shows and household chores, we're again grappling with algebra, grammar, map reading and the bloody French Revolution.
When you recall one night, during history homework, that Robespierre might have slaughtered half of France, one develops blood-chilling fantasies about novel ways to "eliminate" the educationists and politicians who devised our school curricula and syllabi. We need a modern-day Napoleon to march them off with scant clothing and supplies through the snow and blizzards on another ill-fated Moscow Campaign. Otherwise, let's pack them off with a one-way ticket to a funny farm in the Karoo.
One's criticism isn't laid at the incalculable value of having a good education, but at the predominantly nonsensical approach to developing syllabi, estimating workloads and understanding what skills and knowledge a child is ready to demonstrate or acquire at a particular age. At certain phases in a child's primary and secondary education, they're expected to take giant leaps forward in assimilating relatively complex ideas and developing a leonine appetite for homework.
While children can and should learn the value of perseverance, discipline and diligence, their workloads at times are unrealistic and even inhumane. How many mums and dads over the last ten to 15 years have watched a bright and competent child slump off to bed teary eyed because of a seemingly impossible assignment or an unsympathetic or even downright inept teacher?
Most days, your child spends five to six hours in and around dull classrooms before participating in an hour or two of extramurals. If your child is a keen cricketer, he could be at school from 07:30 to 18:00 and then have to do several hours of homework and projects before bedtime. Therefore, some projects have to be undertaken with help from a parent or two (or an older sibling) to meet a deadline.
Homework often is too time-consuming. Why does a child's maths homework exercise entail ten questions on fractions or ratios when five will suffice to build his knowledge and understanding?
Politicisation and incompetence
Then there is the repoliticisation and repositioning of history books (not to forget other textbooks). We still have a nationalist invasion of the school syllabi. This time it's the African National Congress' version of "history", "truth" and how we should perceive watershed events since Van Riebeeck's landing at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. What an excellent way to develop a pathological distaste for history and an equally pathological distrust of politicians.
Another bugbear is the teaching of vernacular languages. In the case of most Johannesburg schools, the language is Zulu. One's child undergoes four to six years of primary-school Zulu lessons (often with an ill-qualified or inexperienced "educator"). You hope your child will be the next Johnny Clegg, able to regale the Zulu kingdom with vernacular stories and songs. One's high hopes are trashed when you realise your child, now 13, can't hold a rudimentary three- or four-sentence conversation with someone who's spoken Zulu since toddlerhood.
Despite the exhilarating advance of physics and chemistry, educationists and teachers continue to make physical science boring and perplexing with scant relevance to the everyday lives of young minds. Educationists and teachers seem to have the same cruel approach to maths, so we shouldn't be surprised that too few school-leavers want to pursue a Bachelor of Science in maths or physics.
Art teachers expect blatantly non-artistic kids to be competent at drawing and able to grasp the finer rudiments of composition, proportion and perspective. Tongue-tied introverts have to stand in front of a class to deliver a speech on some tedious topic chosen by the teacher or prescribed by the education authorities.
To exacerbate matters, improperly skilled and motivated teachers drive a mathematically or linguistically gifted child into "extra" maths, Afrikaans or Zulu lessons. If your diligent child attends his compulsory school classes and pays attention, you should be able to deduct the costs of his extra lessons outside school from your school fees or taxes. Educator incompetence, indifference and inadequacy have many expressions.
Besides some teachers adhering to the archaic practice of favouritism, a few too many indulge in "dark sarcasm" and other demeaning ploys to make some unfortunate child the classroom idiot or outcast. They're not allowed to touch your child, nor can they carry out any form of corporal punishment, but educator hands and voices are still raised in threatening or offensive ways. A few teachers get exasperated when an attentive child asks for an unfamiliar or confusing concept to be re-explained.
One's litany of woes about being back at school with one's kids goes further.
If, however, we're permitted to raise our hands and ask one pertinent question as concerned parents, why do educationists and education ministers persist so doggedly in pursuing too many outmoded, irrelevant or contemptible classroom policies and practices? As Roger Waters sings on The Wall, our kids "don't need no thought control", nor do they desire "certain teachers who would hurt the children anyway they could by pouring their derision upon anything we did".
It's time to depoliticise and emancipate education and align it with the realities of our primary social concerns and issues, not to forget the pressures of the marketplace and our emerging quest for greater spiritual meaning. Let's give our kids greater choices, greater freedom and greater respect within an enlightened framework of responsibility and accountability. Let's encourage them to unleash their individuality, creativity and innate talents to empower them, our economy and our society.
If we want to get South Africa humming more sweetly over the next few decades, let's listen to what parents and kids have to say. Their insights might just be our greatest education.
*Michael Waddacor has been a journalist, writer and music critic since 1979.
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