Education is Priceless

The South African Government’s schooling system is a complete mess. This is not new news. It is merely a stated fact that we’ve all become accustomed to.

In a perfect world every child would have access to a brilliant school, fully qualified teachers and the necessary text books. However we live in a country that has been raped by greedy politicians and abused by the very government that was supposed to save our nation from the horrors of an unjust past.

Instead our lovely government has brought such turmoil to our country that it is barely even recognizable.

Every true South African finds the idea of a Rainbow Nation beautiful and is excited by the diversity in race, culture and language. We all have an image of what South Africa could be and I think we can all agree that it is very different from the one we presently live in.

I was fortunate enough to go to a beautiful private school in White River. My brother however, attends the local government school and in the last two weeks has been busy with exams. As I’ve been home I have been helping him out with his studying and it completely shocked me that in grade 5 he was still being taught BODMAS!

Then I realized in horror that he was being taught BODMAS, incorrectly!

My heart broke for the little guy. How was he ever supposed to make it into a decent high-school if he was taught the wrong thing? And then it dawned on me – he wouldn’t. The truth of the matter is that the government has not invested in the youth as well as it should have. These kids are going to be our future leaders and yet they sit on the floors of over-crowded classrooms with under-qualified teachers and no textbooks.

The saddest part about it all is that if these kids were supplied textbooks they could take some initiative and self-study the relevant work, or get their parents to teach them, but for a lot of these children the financing for school textbooks is non-existent and without the aid from government they face a burden far greater than any child should ever be expected to carry.

That was when I heard the horror stories of the textbooks being demolished in Limpopo…

The sad reality is that due to one person’s incompetence an entire province’s youth will live an uneducated life. What hope or prospect does this give them? How far can one be expected to go in life if you couldn’t even receive a grade 1 textbook because of some corrupt official who was put in charge by an even more corrupt government?

So in thirty years when my generation is looking for people to train up to specialize in the various fields of life, we will have to choose between the privileged, well-educated and the unprivileged, uneducated and the sad reality is that irrelevant of your upbringing, once educated, you are far easier to train. Those with a better education will continue to excel and those without it will fall back into the slum they were brought up in.

Once in the courtroom, the war is already lost. The war needs to be battled in the classroom. After all, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

 Education Minister Angie Motshekga should stop parading her lies and realize that if South Africa’s youth is unable to succeed it falls in her lap!