Focus on Learning and Teaching
Speech given at the Helen Suzman Foundation 16-02-2010
It’s not often that you find Khehla Shubane, RW Johnson and John
Kane-Berman agreeing on something. But over the past couple of weeks,
they have all been quoted in Business Day mentioning, in passing, as if
it were a given, the decline of education in South Africa. That there
are problems in education – nobody in their right mind would deny that.
But to say that education is getting worse is a serious statement which
needs to be examined carefully. Worse than what?
Nelson Mandela, in his Statement from the Dock during the Rivonia
Trial, referred specifically to the parlous state of black education,
with 40% of black children between 7 and 14 not attending school, and
only 362 black pupils passing matric in 1962. We are most certainly not
worse than that.
Is it the curriculum, then that is worse? Well again let’s look back.
In the past, each race group had their own curriculum, by and large
inferior to the white or House of Assembly curriculum. For the
first time, now, our schools are teaching a single curriculum,
and measuring their success with a single school –leaving examination.
Everybody , more or less, is in school. Even grade R, the pre-primary
grade, has an 80% take up this year.
Is it a good curriculum, this one single curriculum that we now share?
Well, that is a gap in this Focus. I had an article promised on the new
curriculum – it didn’t materialise, and it was too late for me to
commission another one. So I am going to leave it to your
judgement.
Closer to the end of the year, the Star newspaper carries a Matric
Matters supplement which contains past papers. Don’t just line the
parrot’s cage, or put the paper in the orange Ronnie bag. Take out the
matric papers and look at them, and decide for yourselves if they are
better or worse than you were at school.
If you can’t contain your curiosity, these papers are also available on
the Department of Education website.
It is my own unshakeable conviction that this generation of schoolkids
– not enough of them, but not less of them either - are getting a
better education than our generation did.
Well, you will have gathered from that that I hold strong opinions
about education. And so it was an absolute delight to me to be asked by
the Helen Suzman Foundation to put together an issue of Focus focusing
on education. And a further delight to find what a very high calibre of
person, of teacher, of researcher, of writer, was prepared to
write articles.
Of course, you should read all of this edition of Focus. But if by some
unfortunate happenchance you are not able to do that, if you have to
select, what should you read? That depends what you are reading
for.
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If you want to stay ahead of the curve, if you want to know about
the debates before they happen, you should read two articles: the one
about private education for the poor, and the one about first in
generation or first in family students. Private education for the poor
will most certainly become part of the public debate this year; and I
hope it’s a good, deep debate. Remember you read it in Focus first.
I can’t predict with as much certainty when the first in generation
idea will percolate up into the public consciousness, but percolate it
will. The term refers to young pioneers – first in their immediate
family, or their generation, or perhaps their village to go to high
school or get matric or go to university. The idea of providing support
to these individuals is very developed in the United States – less so
here, although probably quite a high proportion of young South Africans
at high school and university fall into this category.
Because it is both a new and an important idea, we have dealt with
it in two ways in Focus – a first person narrative account by Alfred
Lephoi, and a box giving some of the research that you can follow up if
you are interested.
If you want to take part in an informed way in current debates, then
you need to read the articles on teachers and on the training of
teachers, and on mother tongue instruction.
If it’s solutions that interest you, you have a lot of reading to do.
The government cannot solve the problems of education on their own.
Many of the writers in Focus recognise this. Some of them urge the
formation of more partnerships, but many of them describe existing
partnerships, and the problems they have solved or can solve.
Partnerships range from the founding or baseline partnership of
school-home-learner through community and corporate partnerships to the
often unsung partnership between state and fee-paying state school
parents.
Of course a good debate depends on ideas, and also on words and
language. One of the things I have found exciting as the articles
started to come in is the appearance of a new language to address
educational issues. So often in education we come up with the wrong
answers because we ask the wrong questions. The new wine of our very
changed circumstances here in South Africa is still going in to
wineskins made of old words – words that cannot help us to understand
what is happening here and now.
So I was delighted to note the tentative emergence of some new terms –
democratic professionalism to describe teachers who must adopt an
attitude that is professional and at the same time fully participate in
our young democracy. Multi-bilingualism to describe a teaching solution
in a South African classrooms where in any given class there are likely
to be at least five languages spoken. Reflective practitioners as a
term to try and resolve the tension between theory and research on the
one hand and classroom practice on the other.
I’d like to end with two thank you’s. One to the writers, not only for
their articles but for the work they are doing. Everybody here, in this
room and in this publication, is not just describing but working on the
coalface. They are bringing about change and improvement in
education. I’d like to thank you for that, not just as your
editor but as a citizen.
And thank you to the Helen Suzman Foundation for inviting me to be
guest editor for this issue . I’ve had such fun.
Dr Gillian Godsell
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