Although much more interesting, blogging is like homework. And, much like when I was in school, homework is not my strong point. I clearly remember the first time I realised the term homework is just about semantics, and that homework done at school can lead to the same result as homework that takes you away from watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch at home. I was in Grade 4, and the homework was mathematically inclined. While watching Sabrina, I knew that the homework had to be done. But I thought back to the story of the shoemaker and the elves, and thought that my general awesomeness had warranted me my own pair of elves who would creep into my room late at night and complete the work I simply did not have time to do myself. It was only when I arrived at school the following day that I was reminded about the work by the way-too-eager-to-have-done-their-work girls in my class. Not one to panic, I decided that I had a few minutes before the ringing would signal the beginning of the school day. I did the work, not really concerned with its correctness. When we were marking the work in class (needless to say, things weren’t going too well for me) I came to another realisation about “homework”: it doesn’t have to be right. As long as there was writing in your book, you’d be good to go!
But I digress. Closely related to the anecdote that you’re not particularly interested in, is the topic of discussion for this blog. Education in this country is a conundrum. It’s the most important puzzle to work out, but we are all like ADHD students, easily distracted by the shiny objects of Juju drama and Springbok failures. But I have another anecdote:
During teaching training/ boot camp last year, as part of our “hands on practical experience”, our class was sent in groups of about six to various schools within Grahamstown and the surrounding areas (for those who are not familiar with the Eastern Cape, surrounding areas is really anything up to about an hour’s drive away). The school that I was assigned to attend was in the rural community of Bathurst – about 12km from the idyllic holiday hideaway, Port Alfred. Bathurst is also home to one of the Eastern Cape’s greatest attractions: the Big Pineapple (yes, it is a massive pineapple structure in the middle of nowhere – you’ve gotta love the Eastern Cape!). We were required to spend at least four days travelling to the school each day, but our group decided that we would go for five (interesting how I always get stuck with the eager lot!) and so we got into a Rhodes kombi at about 06:45 every morning and trekked 45 minutes to Bathurst and the 45 minutes back to my dorpie for a week.
I must admit that, since this assignment fell quite near to the beginning of my short-lived teaching experience, I was really excited about the task. It would be our very first opportunity to engage in formal teaching, and it is needless to say that we were all rather eager to show that we, indeed, were going to be the next best thing to hit the South African education system since the abolition of Bantu education. We had been told in the lectures leading up to this practical that the South African, and especially the Eastern Cape, education system is faulty. We were not thoroughly prepared. Faulty implies a few cracks. What we witnessed wasn’t a fault line, it was the Big Hole.
Driving in, the first thing you notice are the tennis courts and the beautiful cricket pitch. The school is small, but the buildings are neat and have a quaint, farm school feeling of older times where students were still taught how to milk cows and make cheese out of the bounty. We really couldn’t believe that our lecturers had lied to us, and although the school was at the end of a bumpy dirt road, one could tell that education was a priority and the pupils who attended the school are looked after and blessed.
We were horribly mistaken. The school that we had been assigned to was across a flimsy wire fence, and the only thing that the two had in common was the bumpy dirt road leading up to them. The school that we saw initially is the private school next door, and the kids from our school are not allowed to play on their cricket field in case they damage it (because, as we all know, poverty means barbarianism). The only sports field that our school had were two net-less netball poles on a flat piece of sanded off land. The classrooms were aluminium prefab structures; the school hall a 200-year colonial chapel that looks like it hasn’t been painted since the settlers had their services the 1820s. If students needed to relieve themselves in the lavatory, the ablution facilities are pit toilets that the government had built about 15 metres from the classrooms. The base of these undignified structures had been cemented close. This means that soon the dungeon beneath the toilets is going to fill up, because a proper sewerage system has not been installed. According to the principal, once this happens, the school is going to have to call the government, who will then send large trucks to suck the waste out from the chambers below, but it is anyone’s guess how long the government will take to send these trucks. He also said that, at the point that we were talking to him, asking for flushing toilets was completely out of the question.
While most of the high school teachers are qualified educators, the primary school teachers can barely speak English. Grades 1 -3 are all put in one class, and their teacher cannot string together an English sentence and is therefore forced to teach the kids in Xhosa. Not that this is a problem, because most of the grade 7’s can barely speak English, so trying to teach History or Science in anything but Xhosa would be a waste of time. By the time the pupils reach grade 11, the 5 that still remain can’t speak English and are more likely than not going to fail matric. There are dedicated teachers who are sincere and want to see the pupils succeed, but the students’ favourite is the teacher that always arrives at school with alcohol on his breath, never able to stand still but rather sways gently while giving his Life Orientation lesson. The school does not have a library, and the only computer that it had was stolen the month before we arrived.
I want to be able to say that there are not many schools like this in South Africa. Or at least to be able to say that this is one of the worst. But the truth is that our little school in Bathurst is actually one of the better ones in the Eastern Cape. I have seen pictures of schools where the principal’s office is in a pit toilet hut, with a cardboard box covering the hole on the floor; grade 1 classrooms with 50 children covering the entire surface of the floor; mud structures (formally classrooms) that have been destroyed by the seasonal rains. I have met pupils who have to walk 20 km’s to get to school, and when they get home do not have electricity to complete their homework. Six year olds who sit in classes with thirteen year olds, learning the same lesson because there are not enough classrooms or teachers to go around. I have been told by teachers that the government has forgotten to deliver the oats for the feeding scheme, and so the kids do not eat for that week because school is the only place where food is available.
And after all this, we are more worried with the low matric pass rate. We allow our students to suffer and fight for eleven years and for the very few who make it, we judge their courage and success based on one exam at the end of it all. We blame the teachers for not caring, the students for having no respect and the parents for not working hard enough. We pull up our noses when mother-tongue education is suggested, and are disgusted when we hear of young people being the leading perpetrators of violent crime.
Perhaps I don’t really get to have a say. Worse than ignorance, I actually had access to the problem firsthand, and I easily walked away. Far from being Super woman, I was more a Mojo Jojo-type character who saw that the problem was just too big for me to handle and, sadly, whimpered away. I guess that everyone has their calling and perhaps I am not noble enough for my calling to be Educator. But, like most South Africans, what I lack in valour I more than make up for in my ability to complain.
I will not bore you with my sentiments on the matter just yet. I think that what I have written is already enough to take in. Hopefully I will become a much more diligent student and write a follow-up blog soon about what I think the problems are and, hopefully, begin a discussion on coming to solutions that do not involve waiting for The Bureaucracy to come back from tea.
In The Tempest, Prospero tells his daughter Miranda "My library was dukedom large enough." Shakespeare makes clear the strong correlation between knowledge and power. We need to make sure that we are building a nation on the foundation of knowledge, or else it is not going to be strong enough to stand.
