Education Itches

Source: Calibre

“If you measure the statistics you miss the human aspect” -Timo Heikkinen

I truly think I’m a horrible friend, I forgot the love of my life’s birthday. We’ve been friends for almost a decade but it feels like we’ve been friends forever. To make matters worse my financial standing over the past two months has been in the dustbin so I couldn’t do much to even attempt to fix my fails. Because I’ve felt horrid I haven’t been able to write much. I thought of writing a 2016 reflections post but…. I also thought of writing a new year’s resolutions post, sat in front of the computer for a good hour and nothing came. And now here we are, the academic year for high school and primary school has commenced, and matric results of 2016 are (have beeeeen) out. With all these academic/school/education things in mind I feel that it’s time we talked about the state of education in South Africa (and perhaps Africa in general).

I have two real goals in life. The first is to want to be and consciously work towards being the person that Christ wants me to be. And the second one is success. Success for me is not simply being able to afford lavish cars and an even more lavish house and lifestyle (even though these are great), but it also means success for my community, country and ultimately the continent; with economic growth and development, and wealth distribution being the main indicators of said success. That being said I also believe that quality education is the key to the abovementioned “success indicators”. I’m also of the opinion that access to information is fundamental in achieving, facilitating, and providing quality education. The state of the South African education system is a long standing itch for me, and I’ll explain why.

The art of learning isn’t just about knowledge retention and recollection, it’s more about skills acquisition and application; confusing the two can and does have disastrous consequences (see South African education system for evidence). In my opinion, the problem with the education system in South Africa is the fact that it is knowledge focused instead of skills focused. In high school you have to choose a set of subjects that you want to study, the decision you make in Grade 9 (as a 15-year-old) determine (and possibly limit) the number of career options you have going into university.

Personally I don’t agree with the emphasis and pressure that is put on students to take mathematics and science in school, but these are currently the main (if not the only) subjects that equip students with skills and not just knowledge. Mathematics isn’t just about math operations and solving for x, most of it meant to develop problem solving skills. And so to have the government lower the pass rate for math to 20% is just them making a bad situation worse. The motivation behind the reduction in the math pass rate is that so that students who pass their other subjects don’t get held back by math (this a bucket of you know what, but what do I know).

The Finnish education system (one of the best ranking in the world), has no mandatory standardized testing until the end of a child’s high school career. There is no ranking, comparison or competition between students, schools or regions (all the things that South Africa does). There is so much pressure to perform (for both the government and the students) it distracts form the actual goal, providing and attaining quality education. But the problem is we are always looking at the wrong stats, like how many people passed matric instead of how the majority passed. Perhaps if we moved away from all the standardized testing we would do better.

The Finnish and Danish education systems (among others) are popular for being unconventional, yet they are successful. I believe this is what South Africa needs, to design an unconventional education system that better suits the need and lifestyles (is this correct English?) instead of adopting teaching and learning methods that are not suited for our people.

Source: ALU

Seeing institutions like ALU (African Leadership University) brings me immeasurable joy because it means the change that I’m talking about is coming even if it’s taking a while. ALU is a university founded by Fred Swaniker and deviates from traditional teaching and learning methods. Instead of the traditional lecturer relationship that plagues campuses all over the world, ALU has peer-learning at its heart. From my understanding, the assessment is not limited to the traditional assessment methods but tests the skills that students have developed over time; these are skills like critical thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, quantitative reasoning, and communication. I don’t know about you but these learning outcomes are more practical than being able to remember when the Boston Tea Party was… just saying.

Source: Square Space

I can only hope that in the near future someone with Fred Swaniker’s innovative and creative thinking will be the next minister of education (or president; but you can only dream so much). I don’t know how long the education system can go on like this before it crumbles, but maybe that’s what we need, for it to crumble so we can start afresh on a clean(ish) slate.

E.o.P

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