Slash & Burn

2009/02/13
I FELT proud of the principal of Sinempumelelo Primary School in Beacon Bay for speaking out about the appalling conditions Grade R children suffer at her school (Crammed like sardines in ‘kitchen classroom’, DD, February 4). Let’s hope it’s a sign of growing public intolerance of sub- standard education.

We should share her anger at the way we treat children, but perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised.

Many schools in the Eastern Cape are not suitable for children of any age, let alone for the five year olds who are increasingly enrolling in Grade R. Such schools are neither safe nor clean. They don’t have enough classrooms, furniture or resources for everyone. The evidence is clear that children don’t learn to read, write, use numbers or learn to think creatively and critically. Nor do they learn firm moral values, or develop a strong work ethic. In fact, research shows that very few South African schools make a positive difference to the 12million pupils who attend them, and some actually do harm.

Knowing this, why do we relentlessly follow government policy that lays down that Grade R classes must be attached to primary schools by 2010? How can such schools be suitable when school principals and teachers often have no background in early childhood development, and expect a Grade R classroom to be a mini version of Grade 1?

Although Grade R practitioners receive specialised, accredited training in early childhood development, they remain the “aunties” of education. The minimum ECD (early childhood development) qualification is only the equivalent of Grade 12, and both salaries and status are much lower than those of real teachers. Practitioners who improve their qualifications immediately try for “promotion” to the Foundation Phase.

And why do we insist that every child should have a year at pre-school by 2010, even when it means penning them up in a small shack with nothing to do? Sinempumelelo is certainly not the only school that offers a poor environment. One GradeR class we know of was relegated to a sheep shed after the specially-built Grade R classroom was commandeered as a staff-room. Five-year-old children play in storerooms, amongst rubbish, dust and rolls of barbed wire. Many children are still taught by rote and threatened with a stick if they make a mistake.

It’s not that the policy is bad. On the contrary, in 2001 the Education White Paper 5 on early childhood development broke new ground in acknowledging the profound importance of the early childhood years for the development of human potential. It argues convincingly that society benefits enormously if young children are healthy, well nourished, and are offered creative opportunities and safe surroundings to learn about each other and the world. Therefore, so White Paper 5 argues, government should invest money, time and energy in the wellbeing of all young children, particularly the poor.

One of its main thrusts was to set out a plan – substantiated by international and national research – that every child should be provided with a good quality pre-primary year by 2010. Nothing wrong with that, except that we’ve tacked it onto an already dysfunctional system.

It must have seemed a wonderful idea, in the heady excitement of new and progressive policy development, to airily propose using the existing school system “with some additional investment in building rehabilitation” to accommodate the requirements of Grade R.

Seven years later, the Eastern Cape Department of Education annual performance plan admits that it is so “handicapped by budgetary constraints” that Grade R classes have been attached to schools without the necessary resources or training of practitioners, and that the physical infrastructure is ill-equipped and classrooms in short supply.

It’s time to get our priorities right. Too strong a focus on Grade R at schools not only detracts from the responsibility of communities and families to nurture and educate young children, but also exposes young children too often to what we can only call abuse.

No festive season would be complete without the annual orgy of recrimination and congratulation around the national and provincial Matric pass rates.

And although the critics repeatedly point out that poor Grade 12 results are only an indicator of a deeper social and educational malady, at least the media attention gets ordinary people thinking about education.

So maybe this is a good time to look at some other important indicators of our education system, particularly the six goals we set with 163 other countries in Dakar nine years ago, when we promised to provide Education for All.

The first of the EFA goals is to provide early childhood care and education. We’re not so good at this, although we know that children’s early experiences have a profound effect on later learning and wellbeing. So we let 20% of Eastern Cape children under nine go hungry, and nearly 80% suffer income poverty. 72 out of 1000 South African children die before they turn five, mostly from diseases of poverty. I don’t even mention the levels of child abuse that scar children for life.

And although policy provides that every child should have a pre-primary year, we need to ask serious questions about quality when Grade R classes are tacked onto unsafe, insanitary and ineffective schools in an attempt to meet numerical targets. We need to question why the ‘teacher’ in charge of Grade R children – arguably the most important of a child’s school career – needs only the equivalent of Grade 12, while a high school teacher must have a degree and a teaching diploma.

The second EFA goal is to provide a universal primary education. Here we’re doing well, and in fact we’ve been improving steadily since about 1950. By 2007 over 93% of South Africans aged between 18 and 22 had at least a Grade 7, when fifteen years ago only 84% of the same age group had a primary education. Our children have more years of education than their parents and grandparents.

But we have to ask more hard questions about quality and inequality. Very rich children in Grade 6, for example, achieve 39% more in natural sciences and 44% more in maths than very poor children. And the top 5% of South African children in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study achieved five times more than the bottom 5%. Something’s very wrong.

The third goal is to meet the lifelong learning needs of youth and adults. According to Unesco’s 2009 report, this idea is so hazy that few governments in the world really know what to do. South Africa has a welter of skills programmes and learnerships designed to improve adult skills. These are governed by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and funded through 27 Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs). The acronyms and bureaucracy are so confusing that it’s no surprise that the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), designed to combine training with job provision, has only achieved 19% of its training goals, and spent only 59% of its three-year budget.

We’re doing comparatively well with the fourth goal, adult literacy. About 87% of people over 15 in the Eastern Cape are literate, and younger adults have a much higher literacy rate than older adults. But again, there’s a wide gap in quality of literacy between rich and poor.

The fifth goal is gender equity. Our gender disparity, unusually for a developing country, is in favour of girls. In fact, for many years boys have been less likely to get through high school, despite teenage pregnancies and social discrimination against girls. Boys are the needy ones in our society.

But we really fail badly with with the sixth goal, that of quality. The evidence is in our low literacy and numeracy achievements, particulary in poor communities. And our lack of quality education is reflected throughout the system, not only in Grade 12.

Good morning, and welcome to Comparative Conferencing 101. 

Congratulations on being selected to attend this demanding but very rewarding course.  By the end of this year, after a considerable amount of hard work, you should be able to critically evaluate the relative value of any conference, symposium, seminar or convention you may be required to attend.  You will also be able to do critical justice to the many that you will attend in body even though your heart and mind may not be present.  

During this first year course, you will pick up valuable foundational knowledge on Apparent Concentration and Subtle Disappearances.  The topics might seem self-explanatory, but do not be deceived. Let your mind drift and link to the connotations of these words, and you might get an inkling of the nuanced approach we will take. It is not easy to be apparent, nor yet to be subtle.  I must inform you that extra credits will be granted during this course to those among you who are able to convincingly demonstrate Apparent Concentration and Subtle Disappearances.   If you show exceptional ability you may even be considered for fast-tracking to Conferencing 102.

For the more pedestrian, if you reflect your knowledge adequately in the assignments, practicals and exams, you will be able to progress smoothly to Conferencing 102 next year.  You will then enter the exciting world of Intermittent Toilet Breaks and Side Conversations.  Eventually, if you are sufficiently diligent, you will undertake Advanced Conference Attendance 103 as a major for your degree.  ACA is not an easy option, involving as it does the notoriously tough Peppermint Scoffing module, as well as Doodling, Humming to Yourself, and Rude Limerick Writing.  If you are lucky enough to be accepted for the ACA course, your future is assured.  As you know, at least one conferencing course is now mandatory for all public servants, and is rapidly becoming essential in the private sector workplace as well. 

Now to the theory.  Despite the demanding complexity and subtle nuances of conferencing (Carlysle, as the philosophers amongst you will know, referred to conferencing as the Dreary Science, and compared it in both importance and difficulty to the dismal science of Economics – but I digress) the fundamental premise defining the notion of conferences is simple.  The quintessential Rule of Conferencing was, perhaps, most elegantly expressed by Thunk and Lurker in their 1885 book ‘Blunder and plunder – towards an appraisal of the Kongokonferenz’.  I quote from page 325 of that famous monograph:

The success of the Conference is directly correlated to the extent and quality of the plunder that accrues to the participants.

Many academics have debated the precise meaning of ‘plunder’ in this context, some even going so far as to suggest that Thunk and Lurker were referring to the partition of Africa amongst the European powers.  In our Post-Modern Consumerist era, however, the word has come to mean something far more complex – viz, the pack of gifts handed out to conference delegates. 

At the bare minimum, according to the respected post-Polekwanian scholars, Slash and Burn, the conference package must consist of at least a five-pocket conference bag, with logo and slogan printed on the outside. This is a non-negotiable condition, according to Slash and Burn’s self-referential 2008 article, ‘Comparative Conferencing 101’ (see above). Delegates must be able to outdo colleagues and rivals through the prominent display of conference bags, or the whole foundation on which the notion of conferencing is premised crumbles into hot air.  If hot air can crumble.

I have myself experienced first hand a shocking and tragic conference where bags were not offered at all.  The disaffection of the Delegates at this event was quite evident, even to an unscholarly eye.  Dissatisfaction spread as the delegates grouped together in muttering and menacing clots.  Open revolution was prevented only by the swift distribution of KFC Burgers and Chips, mollifying the masses to some extent.  Nevertheless, the end-of-conference evaluation forms were damning.  My seminal article on this topic has been published in the reputable peer-reviewed journal Conference Reflections and Academic Papers (CRAP, Series 2, Vol 6, pp 33-96) and is essential reading for this course.

Much has been written about other components of the plunder package.  I refer you to Professor Timothy Shyrt, whose finely woven paper on the contribution of stretch lycra golf T Shirts to conference satisfaction is amongst the classics in the genre.  Similarly, the role of caps, pens and writing pads has been extensively covered in the literature.  If you do a search in the library catalogues, you will find at least 30 reputable sources, both national and international.

Which brings me to homework.  For next week, please compose a 5,000 word essay in which you debate the relative value of African beaded nametag holders and personalised bottled water.

And in the meantime, I thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen.  I hope to see you all next week, when we shall be dealing with the robust topic of Conference Consumables.  That should give you food for thought.  

Last week a group of students taught me about poverty and compassion. 

But hang on a second – I was supposed to be teaching them a course for their Diploma in Early Childhood Development.  The curriculum, amongst other things, specifies that they should know about the grim effects of child poverty, so I had come prepared with a bunch of book-learned theories to teach them.

Early childhood development practitioners can be amongst the most important influences in a young child’s life.  They should know about barriers to child development, including how poverty affects children and families.  They must understand the wide and deep reach of poverty – that it is not just a lack of money, but comes with a whole bundle of disadvantages that interact to keep people poor for generations.  They need to know that poverty deprives children of the chance to thrive and grow, that it prevents them getting good food, good health, safety, education, support, and adequate care and stimulation.  Without these things, children are more likely to grow up stunted physically, emotionally and cognitively.  They are far less likely to break through the wall of poverty that keeps people down.  They will probably grow up as poor as – if not poorer than – their parents.

And so the poverty cycle rolls on, generation after generation.  

This understanding is particularly pertinent for Eastern Cape ECD practitioners, since the children of this province suffer deeply.  The statistics show that 8 out of 10 Eastern Cape children live in income poverty, and by far the majority of municipalities in which children suffer most from multiple deprivations are in the Eastern Cape.

Clearly, then, limiting the appalling effects of poverty is sure to be a major part of the students’ everyday work.  They need to identify poverty and try to mitigate its effects.

These women – very few men enter the nurturing world of professional ECD – have a pivotal role to play in the future of the children in their care.  They should be able to offer a safe, stimulating environment where children can explore, play, and learn freely.  Perhaps even more importantly, they should be able to provide the warmth, respect and encouragement that children so desperately need to build resiliency, that wonderful quality that helps us bounce back when life deals us a backhander.  They could make all the difference to the children in their care.

But back to the class. One of the many burdens of poverty is the stigma that often goes with it.  In my naivety, I was half-expecting to uncover the poisonous – and all too common – belief that the poor are somehow to blame for their condition, that handouts will only make them lazier, and that the cure for their poverty is to get off their backsides. 

After all, as a middle-class woman, I have many acquaintances – including, memorably, at least one devoutly religious person – whose convictions that poor people are lazy, dirty, and deserve their fate rise to the surface like scum as fast as you can say ‘social grant’. Talking of social grants, I was also ready for the old stories of how the child grant promotes reckless breeding, and that adults spend the R210 per month on alcohol and luxuries rather than the children – this when about 65% of grant recipients’ budgets are spent only on food.

But these ECD practitioners showed me that they know far more about poverty and compassion than I ever will.  Our discussions showed they have a bone-deep understanding of the way poverty grinds at self-respect, energy levels, and hope. They gave examples of how much harder poor people have to work to gain the smallest benefit. They understand poverty because – like many in South Africa – they live intimately with it.  To condemn the poor for their poverty means to condemn your mother, your neighbour, your sister and your friend. 

So I came away from the class feeling uplifted, confident that these practitioners can contribute enormously to children’s wellbeing, and deeply humbled by the depth of their understanding and compassion.

Here I sit at yet another convention, wondering about the conventions that rule such events.  

I imagine you glaring at me disapprovingly like the woman behind me, who suspects I’m writing scurrilous articles instead of concentrating on the issues.  But why am I not listening to the speaker who is even now (badly) reading out the densely worded PowerPoint on the wall?  My only defence is that this event is so dull that I’d rather speculate on the protocol of conferences than engage with the content of this one.

Besides, the protocol rules – or at least appears to.  For this conference, we have an MC, whose job it is to master the ceremonies.  But it turns out he is mastered by a Programme Director, who longwindedly introduces the Nearly Grand High Official who is deputising for the Real Grand High Official, who has been called to the legislature to account for something or another that was forgotten between talkshops.  The Nearly Grand High Official opens the proceedings with a long spin-doctoring waffle full of words like ‘honoured’ and ‘vision’, ‘partnerships’ and ‘role-players’.   

The MC’s only job, it turns out, is to introduce the people who introduce the speakers, and to whine a bit about how late we all are.  The gaggle of minor players who have been relegated to introducers of the honoured speakers all feel it incumbent upon them to speechify, expressing  how honoured they feel to be introducing the next dull speaker, and carefully mentioning the title of every dignitary they can think of in the stuffy peppermint eating throng.  Mr Toads.

 Why the emphasis on the rules, protocol, and conventions of these gatherings?  Convenience.  It’s easier than thinking.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not averse to processes and procedures.  In fact, structure is a good thing. Without a skeleton, conferences collapse into blob of peppermint-fed fat and flesh on the floor.  But sometimes the conference is just a bit of soggy unleavened dough that has to be propped up by dry protocolic bones.

And this conference is one of those.  People know it is, so we subtly sabotage the rules.  We rustle and chatter in the back rows (or type stuff on laptops), we sneak out for unnecessary toilet breaks, we linger over the coffee and biscuits and we pitch up half an hour late in the morning to the helpless rage of the MC.  After lunch, half the audience is missing.

Brining a group together to confer vibrantly, relevantly and with meaning is difficult. It’s far, far easier to follow an old rigid recipe even though you know its going to produce the same old greasy vetkoek rather than the fabulously satisfying, nutritious meal it should be.  Thus the conventions, and all protocol observed.

Ah well, at least I’ve got another conference bag to add to my pile. But where the blazes is my T shirt?

You ever been to Bhisho?  It’s a funny little place a few kms off the long national road between East London and Johannesburg.  At a blue and hilly distance, Bhisho looks like a little upright dogpile dumped amongst the scattered droppings of huts and shacks that litter the landscape.  And as you get to know Bhisho better, the comparison seems more and more apt.  The only thing that changes, with your mood, is the kind of dog that could produce such a remarkable construction.

Bhisho, for those who don’t know, is the capital of the Province of the Eastern Cape.  The Eastern Cape, for those who don’t know, is a spot most blessed and most damned, most poor and yet disgustingly profiteering, Mandela-proud and yet pathetic as grim poverty, as corrupt as a rotten carcase, yet bringing forth a biblical and stinging sweetness.   Geographically, the Eastern Cape is close to the bottom end of a continent best known for its incontinence.  And Bhisho is the logical end product of that continent.

Bhisho is best known for three things: an unused international airport, occupied by stray cattle, none of which have ever been known to take off even after a good gallop down the runway;  having the honour of being the capital of the ill-conceived Aparteid bantustan called Ciskei; being the site of the Bhisho massacre in 1992, in which Ciskei troops killed 29 unarmed and peaceful protesters.

The pile of concrete and dust that forms Bhisho  - I can’t be doing with the word town – is a windswept, mucky conglomeration of columns, glass and broken grass-weeded squares.  The Legislature is here, the Premier’s Residence lurks in a compound of ministerial houses, a bit of University camps out pretending to be important, potholes and shaky white lines dot the roads, two dirty wire-meshed shops sell greasy meat and half-loaves of bread.  Where the office buildings end suddenly, the littered veld begins. And the central building, a glorious monument to a deposed little dictator, is still crowned by a regiment of deformed concrete lions that stare blindly down on the blind leading the blind below.

For Bhisho is filled with the bureaucrats and petty clerks of government.  They drowse in tiny airless offices, huddled in clumps over heaters with the windows closed, or dawdle in clogged corridors, eyes glazed over with something, boredom, nothing.  They produce piles and piles of paper, ill-typed and worse photocopied, and heap them, lost and meaningless, in doggeared corners.  They provide fodder for endless qualified or adverse audit opinions.  They wash cups in blocked sinks, wait endlessly outside broken lifts, and poo in seatless, torn-doored lavatories where paper appears as irregularly as vetkoek-bound excrement.  Nobody can work, because nothing works.  Nothing works because nobody works. 

I know all this because I’ve just finished a three-month contract with a Government Department in Bhisho.  I’ve gazed down on the crippled concrete lions, sifted disconsolately through the endless brown manila folders, kicked aside the empty boxes piled in a corner, queried furiously why people can’t just supply the documents you request, get the fax to work, answer the phone, demand email – this is the twenty-first century! – and for fuck’s sake get the drain unblocked. 

On Wednesday morning I drove to Bhisho, playing Highway to Hell for the last time.  On Wednesday afternoon, on my final trip out of Bhisho, I played Highway to Hell backwards in my mind. 

I feel rejuvinated, refreshed, reconciled, and finally regurgitated from the Bowels of the Bhisho Beast.