By Athambile Masola
I’ve been following the Limpopo textbook saga with half an ear. The furore unfolded while my learners and I were undergoing the arduous and exhausting process of mid-year exams. The debacle has been yet another crude reminder of the compromise of a constitutional right as well as the incompetence of the department of basic education which has placed the education of many children in jeopardy. Without the simple resource of textbooks, I think it’s safe to assume that little (if any) teaching and learning took place in schools in Limpopo.
Most of the commentary on the furore has focused on the department’s failures, the corruption and the tragedy of burning books (I shudder at the thought of books being burnt as it highlights the dismal education in our country where books have no value) and lately, the conspiracy theories about what really led to this demise. As a teacher, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where are the teachers?
Are the teachers in Limpopo so disempowered that they could not make a stand when books were not delivered as promised? Why are teachers in South Africa silent?
The silence suggests a level of disregard for education by teachers and the major teacher union in this country. Contrary to popular belief, teaching is a challenge and it becomes even more challenging when resources are few or non-existent as is the case with many schools in South Africa. However, teachers who are mostly affected by a lack of delivery are also the teachers who are part of a union that only makes a noise when the question of salaries is on the table. But when the real issues of ensuring teaching and learning in our schools are at stake, there is a deafening silence.
This suggests that most teachers seem to be okay with the lack of infrastructure in their schools; that teachers are okay without the basics in the classrooms (though we know that toilet infrastructure and enough classroom space are no longer considered as the basics). I would love to see a scientist who is relaxed when the chemicals do not arrive for the experiments they need to do in their lab or a doctor who is happy to perform an operation with insufficient anaesthetic or a builder who doesn’t have enough material to build a bridge and attempts to build it anyway.
The silence of teachers in the face of a shambolic education system perpetuates the idea that teaching is not a profession, but rather that the majority of the teachers in our schools are people who are happy to get away with doing as little as possible and receive a payslip they complain about at the end of the month. However, this assessment would be disingenuous to many teachers who work hard under very challenging conditions, who rise to the occasion, and who teach so that their learners achieve great results despite the lack and failures of government.
What further complicates this issue is the disparate nature of teachers as a community. The two systems of education — where one is for the rich with former model c schools and private schools and the other for poor people in townships and rural areas — means that there are two distinct groups of teachers who fight different battles. Teachers in middle-class contexts ward off interfering parents while juggling busy extra-mural timetables, teachers in poorer contexts have to deal with absent parents (for often complex reasons), crowd control and chaotic schools with poor management. The structure of teacher unions further exacerbates this challenge as they further entrench the differences among teachers.
I am not suggesting teachers unite as one homogenous voice, but where there seems to be no communication among teachers about the real changes that need to happen in order to protect the profession from the slippery slope into nowhere, there are very few gains that can be made in education.
This also raises the question of the parents: where teachers fail, why are parents silent? Teachers are supposed to be in loco parentis. Therefore, they need to become more vocal about the state of education as the future of the teaching profession in South Africa is in trouble. We do not produce enough teachers in South Africa and instead there’s a steady exodus of young teachers seeking greener pastures abroad.
The perceptions about teaching in this country further hinder many young people from entering the profession. Those of us who are in the profession are seen as failures (because there’s nothing easier than working with hundreds of teenagers every day or leaving school at 2pm, right?) or as I have personally experienced, I’m simply “going through a phase” and one day I’ll move onto a better profession. There isn’t any expectation that we need to recreate the teaching profession if young people are to consider it as a serious option and become part of changing the face of education in this country.
Citizens and parents need to start expecting teachers to be better. We have an education system propped up by civil society that simply shrugs its shoulders and accepts the status quo and expects teachers to abdicate from their responsibilities and do nothing about the state of their classrooms. For as long as we don’t expect more from our teachers and are quiet about their role in the failure of our system, we are all complicit in the failure of our education system.
Athambile Masola is a teacher at a high school in Cape Town.
What interests me is when did SA go back to “textbook education” and a syllabus; and abandon “Outcomes Based Education” workbooks and projects in the first place?
Maybe it has to do with the departmental ‘Autocatic Democracy’ we seem to have. I think it is phrased in the Ten Commandments of the ANC – The powers that be are Cadres and one shall never dare to raise their voice against a Cadre.
@Lyndall: Textbooks never left. Whether they were used in every school is another story though.
Why are we only having problems with textbook delivery THIS year?
What was different last year, and the years before?
Is this the first year the children are getting textbooks?
@Lyndall: My brother had textbooks all the way through school and he matriculated in 2005. Perhaps it has been going on for time time, but wasn’t reported on nearly as much as the latest debacle.
When I was in Std. 6 my accounting textbook wasn’t delivered until Mid-February. Not the end of the world, but certainly not helpful either.
The “silence” is because teachers are not allowed to speak to the media. This forms part of their employment conditions. The complaints of the unions show that teachers are concerned.
Lennon
Not what my friends were showing me – endless project after project after project! Which the children needed input from parents, libraries, computers and encyclopedias to complete.
Teachers are normally scraped from the very bottom of the tertiary barrel (and more so in South Africa). They aren’t really experts in anything, and nor are they particularly useful. They have a rather inflated opinion of their position in working society and it’s unfortunately an illusion that’s promoted by pandering politicians, eagerly swallowed by lazy parents ever willing to pan off their children’s education as someone else’s responsibility.
Teachers over the years have successfully managed to grow their authority and reduce their responsibilities until they have the entire business world by the scrotum. When they strike (and usually over their personal wants and needs, and NEVER because of wanting better for their students) they cause a massive loss in work hours as parents are forced to juggle responsibilities and baby-care. Who needs their selfish destructive acts? And who really needs their services? We homeschool. And for really excellent reasons.
PS. When did students in SA become ‘learners’? It really sounds so very primitive.
I suspect there are three main reasons why the teachers are mostly silent:
1. Apathy. The reality is that most people are apathetic and unwilling to take actions that benefit themselves only indirectly;
2. Fear of persecution. Let’s be honest, Limpopo government at times resembles a mafia, so raising concerns is likely to be met with indifference at best or persecution.
3. Incompetence. Many of the teachers are incompetent. This means that they try to keep their jobs by not drawing attention to themselves (see 1 and 2).
The more interesting question is: why is SADTU silent? Not because of 1 and 2. So almost certainly because of 3.
I think this was well-written and would have loved a response from the relevant teachers. I do understand the strain and difficulty they are working under. Maybe they found a good solution for the problem, so it will be good to hear from them. If not, if is very disappointing that they stayed silent.
@Lyndall – there have been problems every year. The story is quite simple. Initially the supply was put out on tender which went to booksellers or ‘educational specialists’. This was fine and worked OK but then that nebulous criteria of black ownership contained in the Preferential Procurement Act was applied and all sorts of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers were winning tenders. They lacked the skills and capacity to deliver and disaster ensued (some were actually very good but the Big Bad Bunch dominated). So instead of admitting it was a case of tenderpreneuship gone horribly wrong they blamed the system and this was used to instill Edusolutions as the ‘Mr Fix-It’.
A huge creaky monopoly was created and the rest is now unfolding…
As much to the point is what national and provincial government/education departments are doing with their time if they remained completely unaware of this until the press leaked it? And that answers the question of why the state feels uncomfortable with the media…the state is too many kms behind what is going on with everything in SA From top to bottom, it’s all about good management, which requires accurate report back and should immediately step in to help where issues occur. The provinces are too autonomous and do their own thing.
@Guinnessholic #; nothing like a few generalisations to start the day (so I’ll keep it up) and I hope you learnt everything you know without teachers and will not send any children near any teachers. I’m sure also that the teachers will be glad not to have such a wiseass cynic as a parent.
The Thought is good but a little myopic. It’s like focussing on the smooth tyres as the cause of a taxi with no brakes, overloaded and an unlicenced driver, crashing. The focus should really be to find the head of the beast. Who allowed all these faults to be ignored? Hence the saying: the fish rots from the head.
So it is with SA education. Look at the post 94 history. Teachers retrenched, training colleges closed, the whole system thrown out in favour of an untried, largely theoretical concept in OBE. Good schools and teachers were vilified, standards were dropped, incompetents were appointed to just about every senior position from minister down and they appointed even less competent people. Corruption flourishes. SADTU prevents the weeding out of “bad” teachers.
Who allowed, and even pushed for, this to happen? I say the ANC tripartite government. They are to blame and until they change, or change their ways, education will remain a bleak morass; maybe intentionally so.
As a teacher, I am increasingly beginning to wonder whether public education is even worth it. The idea is to produce a literate and skilled populace capable of 1. dull, repetitive work and 2. innovative thinking and 3. both. What are we doing if we are actually asking this of people while not considering individual differences in talent?
It doesn’t take much to teach literacy and numeracy at the most basic level. I suggest that this should be the only function and goal of the department of basic education. Once that is properly managed and achieved, let choice and private education rule with subsidies for poor students.
Could the part of the problem be that dismal wages attract disinterested people to teaching posts?
@Shaun, the problem with SA is nobody is directly elected to office in this country and accountable to the people. There is no fear by the officials in the government that they will lose their jobs because the party will protect them. The head of the education department is the head of the women league and she will be one of the kingmakers at the ANC convention in December. The sad part about it the people will vote for them in the next election regardless of what the ANC does.
Sterling
Actually at local governance level we do have direct representation and elected ward councillors – it does not help because the ANC imposes from the communist central authority the main civil servants, including municipal managers, as “deployed cadres” and councillors can’t chose their own civil servants.