“In terms of the law, education is not our commitment, but in terms of society, it is our duty,” these words by Executive Mayor of Ekurhuleni, Mondli Gungubele continue to disturb me well after he addressed council as he concluded youth month on Thursday June 20.
I cannot shake the feeling that the statement exposes a loop hole in our approach to dealing with many of our challenges. We are so eager to get people jobs yet, we are not concerned whether they have the maximum skills required to flourish.
Society teaches children not to have an ambition of excelling at school because ‘the government can employ me even if I do not have matric’. Yes, we spend a lot of money to create jobs, but one has to question which jobs are we creating?
Are we fairly giving young people the opportunity to choose and strive towards achieving their dream, or are we simply creating a below par ‘dream’ for them to aim for?
Young people’s dreams should not be restricted by the lack of or availability of finance, nor should they be restricted by government’s unwillingness to prioritise on education. I say this because the opening statement reminded me of an article I read about a year ago on education.
The article stated that government or the ANC could not classify education as a basic service, one of the reasons being it would deny teachers their right to embark on a strike. Well, something to that extent. As much as I understand the reasons, we can only imagine the kind of targets we can achieve should we dare provide quality education to our youth. Yes, we also need to create job opportunities, but that must not be all we aim for. It is necessary for us to educate our youth to have expertise in their fields and to do so government needs to offer quality education.
However, we have to admit that jobs are urgent and the government has the challenging task of balancing quality education and providing jobs. In my view, we need to strike a balance between creating jobs now, while improving our education system.
