A tale of Two South Africas

Warning: Long blog on the politics of ed coming up.  Read if you are interested!

On Tuesday morning we were up super early to leave the lodge and head to our first secondary school visit a township secondary school.  There we were welcomed at the morning assembly where the kids sang for us and we introduced ourselves.  They were bursting with excitement.  Met all the teachers and then I got the chance to sit in on two history classes.  In the first, the 12th graders were learning about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  In the second, the 11th graders were learning about the Russian Revolution.

All throughout South Africa, the students had a three week  break that just ended this week, with kids returning to schools on Monday.  As a result, most of the school visits in the later part of this week at secondary schools included kids reviewing their exam results with their instructors. 

On Wednesday we had the chance to visit two former Afrikaaner only schools.  It was quite a contrast.  Following 1994, these schools were opened up to students of all races.  The schools opened themselves up voluntarily, though probably largely because once the shift happened, they lost lots of white learners to private schools.  In order to still have a solid enrollment count, they had to accept other races.  That meant that the first school on Wednesday, though formerly white only, was now really black only for all intents and purposes.  The second former Afrikaaner school hadn't experienced the white flight yet, and maintained 50/50 enrollment by race.


Seeing the differences in the three schools is what really made me want to switch my potential research topic from curriculum reform to equity and quality in South African education.  In doing so, I'll be looking at equity for students of all races in terms of resource distribution, infrastructure and facilities, and quality of instruction.

In the township school I was struck by the physical space.  The school itself seemed a bit prison-like, with small classrooms in "blocks" with metal grates over the doors to secure them in the evening.  The walls were completely bare with not so much as one poster or flyer hanging in any of the rooms I saw.  There was a chalkboard in the room where I observed the classes, but none of the students had texts or notebooks in front of them.  In fact, during the entire time the teacher lectured, he asked maybe 1-2 questions that were simply recall.  While I know it's a totally different system than we have at home, I couldn't help but compare it to how we are told day in and day out to teach and the conversations we have about what effective teaching looks like.  Here, the students were compliant, but in my opinion, the relatively low expectations for what students can and should do in a classroom contributed to pervasive disengagement in their studies.

In one room, the students were gathered without a teacher present.  It gave me the unique opportunity to speak with them openly about their education and their future.  They repeatedly expressed that they didn't feel respected by teachers and that they didn't have the necessary supplies with which to complete the assignments in a meaningful way.  One even explained to me that "practicals" or science labs were done out of the book due to a lack of supplies.  In speaking with the teacher, he noted that he couldn't give history books out mainly because the students wouldn't bring them back and their families wouldn't be able to afford the penalties for not returning a book.  He mentioned that they didn't know how to read anyway.

While this seemed like a harsh way to view your own students, as I learned throughout the next few days, the system of social promotion that exists in grades R (kindergarten) to 12 magnify the problems students have with literacy. 


Kids in the township school didn't see school and education as an escape from poverty, with one remarking that he was "born here, lives here, and will die here." Instead, it seems that local students in that community marry miners at a very young age (who come from Zimbabwe and Mozambique) as a way to escape and have someone that will provide for them.  Drugs seem to provide a temporary escape, as each school we've gone to has expressed a big problem with drug abuse.


In the township school, there was a big emphasis on the teacher's political views, which I found surprising.  In the states, we are taught to provide as objective a lesson as possible in terms of those topics, so as not to have our own views cloud and bias our teaching.  Here, the political views of the teacher were at the forefront of the discussion, as he urged the students to think about what the ANC has actually done for them.  Some of those students will be able to vote in the next election.

In the two other schools we saw the picture, at least superficially, was less bleak.  The first former Afrikaaner only school seemed well-equipped but in speaking with a science teacher, we realized they faced many of the same problems, just on a smaller scale.  They had a high drop out rate, and a low rate of college enrollment.  They did have some computer labs that were donated by the DOE, but the science teacher again came back to the refrain (as in the other school) that because of a lack of supplies, students could not do labs themselves.  She utilized youtube, she said, or brought in materials (at her own expense) and conducted the labs for them.

The second school, named after a prominent figure of apartheid South Africa, worked to ensure us that the races happily mingled and it was the true representation of the new South Africa.  But, as our colleagues found out speaking with kids later, that's an image that might not entirely be accurate.  While the students were in integrated classes and seemed to have a good rapport with their teachers, it definitely wasn't as simple as the guides made it out to be.

Both former Afrikaaner only schools had adequate sports facilities, arts and culture classes, tutoring and extra curriculars.  But they also charged student fees.  Furthermore, in one of the schools, with the justification that teachers needed to be bilingual in both English and Afrikaans (as it was a dual language school), blacks were effectively prevented from teaching there, which left me wondering about the impact of that on black learners.  How does it make them feel to have no one that looks like them as a role model at the school?

Ultimately, I left with a number of questions still unanswered.  For one, what it left me wondering was why the system of social promotion hasn't changed in South Africa.  Clearly it is failing the students, the teachers, and the entire next generation of this country.  What can be done about it?

Similarly, the instructional quality at the schools was not good.  While a colleague commented that she "took her American hat off when traveling," (which I understand in some cases) as a teacher, and educator of pre-service teachers, I don't think that applies in this situation.  Kids are the same everywhere you go.  There's plenty of research that has been done on how students learn best--not just how American students learn best.  Low expectations, lecturing without checks for understanding, and making no attempts to engage students simply doesn't work.  While kids may be compliant, they are being seriously shortchanged here- and it made me sad to see.

There is a more positive tale about the school we saw today.  Will put that in the next post.

Maura