Enough has recently been written by experts and concerned parents about the deterioration of basic education in South Africa to fill a small library.
Comment ranges over a broad front, ranging from absentee teachers, lack of basic facilities, declining levels of education in all subjects, very unfavourable comparisons with other developing nations, teacher dissatisfaction and discipline in schools.
Teachers are also abandoning the profession in droves, mainly to work in other countries which treat them with the respect their profession deserves.
Generally the State’s answers to these and many other problems have been political rather than to specifically appoint experts to address the issues. Over the last two decades there have been a number of disruptions also due to radical curriculum changes and crippling teacher strikes.
As discipline in schools declines there is a disturbing rise in class and playground violence which reached a peak some weeks ago when a teacher was shot, a pupil was speared to death and various assaults on teachers in class by pupils shook the nation.
The country is not producing enough teachers to man the State schools and those teachers who work within it are in the main disillusioned.
Expert opinion on the extreme and deadly violence in schools links with a broader national situation where some 16 000 South Africans are murdered each year, with the murderous behaviour simply flowing over into specific institutions, like schools.
Lawlessness rules
As the police, in the broader societal context, appear simply helpless to curb the violence, so the teachers in classroom situations are similarly impotent and like the police, themselves often victims of lawlessness.
There is also the view, held among teachers that parents and school governing bodies have a far larger role to play in disciplining their offspring at home.
The irony in this is that many parents expect discipline to be instilled in the school environment.
In the past corporal punishment was the sanction for extreme disobedience in our schools and while this has been officially banned for some sixteen years, a recent popular TV programme told viewers that it is still applied by some 50% of State schools.
While this is the case, whatever you may think of corporal punishment, this dichotomous situation creates tensions which explode into physical confrontations.
The total failure of any protocols regarding the use of cell phones by pupils in State schools is also cited as a reason for poor discipline.
Getting the classroom assault on a school teacher onto YouTube is considered a greater achievement by some pupils than doing their homework or passing such exams as there still may be.
Perhaps drug and alcohol abuse, murder and rape in our schools, are sad symptoms of a society in transition, but the fact is that the absence of tranquillity in what is supposed to be an academic environment will prove disastrous in the long haul.
