Teachers need to play an expanded fostering role
- William Gumede
In near-failed states, such as South Africa, individual teachers have a greater obligation to mould citizens for the fast-changing world.
In broken societies, as South Africa is, teachers are even more critical in shaping well-rounded young citizens equipped to navigate complex individual, intimate relationship, workplace, and societal challenges.
South Africa has often been talked about as a country on the verge of becoming a failed state, when a state is captured by corrupt individuals, where the state cannot or its leaders lack the will to enforce the rule of law, cannot protect its citizens and struggles to provide the most basic public services, it cannot fill a pothole or replace a pit latrine in a school.
A broken society is where social order has broken down, moral values have collapsed and traditional family structures that centre individuals and provide a personal accountability framework, have largely fractured. In broken societies, such as South Africa, other societal institutions, such as traditional, cultural and religious, that alongside, the family institution, is supposed to provide moral values, well-rounded sense of self, and individual accountability compass have to a large extent been corrupted, degenerated or so outdated to be irrelevant for present day human challenges.
Quality education is one of the single most important stepladders out of poverty, to break generational cycles of deprivation, to achieve individual economic freedom in societies like South Africa with deep legacies of systemic race or ethnic-based poverty.
In near-failed states and broken societies, such as South Africa individual teachers have a greater obligation to mould citizens for the fast-changing world of work, economy and for healthy roles in society. The fostering role of teachers is critical when society child moulding institutions such as the family, communal traditions and moral frameworks are in many instances are broken, outdated or harmful.
Technology is changing faster than business or society can adapt. We are seeing the merging of human and Artificial intelligence and of physical and digital worlds – which makes many old business operational models outdated. This makes the traditional role of the teacher, even in relatively ‘normal,’ ‘healthy’ and stable societies, much more onerous.
Teachers are mentors - guiding pupils to choose the right economy-relevant subjects. They are foster parent figures, and examples of good values-based adult behaviour and leadership, in a failing society, where political, traditional, and religious leaders lack the maturity, emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
The trauma of apartheid has left a crisis of broken black family structures. The apartheid migrant labour system removed males from families to distant workplaces. It emasculated black males by treating them as children. Forced removals broke families.
Sadly, although formal apartheid has ended, new families that have been started in the post-apartheid era, have repeated the cycle of apartheid-era broken family structures. Many of South Africa’s family structures are fatherless, and many, if they are present, are a negative presence. Many family structures are not headed by adults. Others are headed by grandparents, often one grandparent.
The reality is that family structures, particularly family of formerly disadvantaged communities, are more diverse, more complex, and less traditionally nuclear, and will continue to be so. However, the family structures, whatever form, which should hold individuals, children, and youth accountable have largely collapsed in many previously disadvantaged communities.
The fracturing of family structures mean that structures, rules, and values – which fosters healthy habits, relationships, and decisions, for children are not conveyed in family structures. Other societal values or rules-forming institutions, such as traditional, communal, or religious ones, have in many instances been largely corrupted, are outdated or are toxic.
Sadly, the ANC, like many African liberation movements have not given building value-based, rule-based and psychologically-safe familyhood, of whatever form, much priority, with many ANC politicians, and many politicians of breakaways from the ANC, like the EFF and MK, lacking the leadership maturity, well-roundedness and emotional intelligence do so.
Schools are crucial in social norm setting. This means that teachers will have to play the foster role of nurturing healthy habits, relations, and decisions, for children under their care.
In new developing democracies, teachers also have a critical role in nurturing democratic culture – the everyday democratic civic habits, Constitutional values, and active citizenship.
South Africa’s democracy is struggling to mature because many political leaders, parties, groups, and citizens do not buy into democracy. South Africa’s Constitution is being contested by parallel governance systems, such as loyalty to the ANC’s constitution, customary law in the rural areas and gang ‘law’ in many townships. These parallel governance systems govern the everyday individual behaviour of many South Africans.
In new democracies, like South Africa, schoolteachers’ democracy building role is to inculcate democratic values, the embrace of the Constitution and democratic institutions as part of the national identity of children. The United States is one society, where teaching democratic values, the embrace of the country’s Constitution and democratic institutions to children, was and is a key part of the teacher’s role.
South Africa is one of the world’s most diverse societies. Embracing diversity is one of the fundamental Constitutional principles of the country, and a key uniting force and a central pillar of a common South African identity. Acceptance of our diversity by all South Africans is a critical pillar of a common South African identity. There are many groups, political parties and political leaders who do not embrace diversity as the common South African identity.
Some populist political leaders and groups astonishingly belief that only one group, colour or community make are ‘real’ South Africans, or only of ‘their’ group, colour or community is solely in control of South Africa, can the country prosper. Others again wrongly belief that South Africa’s diversity is an obstacle to development and social peace. The teacher’s role is therefore to inculcate the principle of diversity as the pillar of a common South African identity.
Quality education is the kind of schooling that gives a pupil the right hard and soft skills to compete globally - meaning to be able to leave South Africa and compete in other markets. This critical aspect of modern education, to school an individual to compete, in other markets, which has been at the heart of Asian miracle economies, such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea, and behind the spectacular rise of China, is often poorly understood in South Africa.
Teachers will have to guide pupils – those from poor communities are unlikely to get such guidance from broken family structures, let alone from South Africa’s shockingly underwhelming politicians, most of whom have never work outside politics or the state, so have little grasp of the real economy, neither do they have much understanding of how important it is that children choose the appropriate subjects to thrive in the artificial intelligence world. Such subjects would include STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
For another, it is the obligation of teachers to guide pupils to do as much possible do pure mathematics, rather than mathematics literature, and to aim for a pass mark of above 50%, rather than the 30%, the ANC government introduced.
Quality education is also about developing the self-agency of the pupil - the ability to influence one's own actions and life circumstances. Quality education also fosters the personal, or inner or self-development of the pupil: growing the mental, social, spiritual, physical, and emotional depth of pupils.
For South African teachers to play this expanded fostering role, the curriculum of teaching will have to be enriched. The quality of intakes for teacher training will have to be improved.
Life-long learning has to be fundamental to teacher development. A teaching curriculum for teachers must also involve understanding the South African Constitution, democratic values, and the importance of diversity as the key defining feature of South Africanness.
South Africa’s teachers’ unions, many still entrenched in the anti-apartheid struggle ethos of opposition, must become builders of school institutions that function, teachers that put professionalism first, and nurturers of well-rounded pupils.
To strengthen teaching in South Africa’s broken society, will need an all-of-society collaboration. The corporate sector must get involved in strengthening teaching, schools, and enriching curricula. The current misfiring black economic empowerment model, which only enrich a small political elite, could for example be transformed to reward companies that strengthen schooling, teaching, and curricula. Rich schools could partner with poorer peers - exchanging resources, teachers, and training.
Successful pupils from previously disadvantaged communities must get actively involve in their former township schools, whether through mentoring, sitting on governing boards or providing funding. Adults, even if they do not have children, must volunteer to help struggling schools, whether in management, sports, culture, or music. Civil society, community organisations, and activists should volunteer to help keep schools safe, clean, and resourced.
We have many examples, even during the apartheid-era of teachers playing broader development roles.
I was lucky enough to benefit from conscious teachers. In the 1980s, I attended Ravensmead Senior Secondary School, an Afrikaans-medium high school on the Cape Flats. During the apartheid-era, the school was located in a triangle of townships among the most violent, most drug- and gang-infested areas on the Cape Flats, if not, in South Africa. In the 1980s, it was in the incubating area for local competing youth gangs - including the Ugly Americans, Sexy Boys and smaller gangs. In 2017 the high court ruled that Ravensmead’s neighbouring school, Uitsig High School should be shut because of the lack of safety of pupils, drugs, and ill-discipline. Many of the current now adult gang leaders were my competing youth peers.
The teachers at Ravensmead Senior Secondary School, in spite of apartheid resource restrictions on non-white schools, did their best to enrich the curriculum. They went out of their way to teach music, culture, and sport. The school produced sports people like Kamaal Sait, the former Orlando Pirates and AmaZulu football player and Vernon Philander, the former national cricketer.
The teachers at school believed in developing all-round pupils. After hours at school was a hive of sport, cultural and music activities. One of the teachers, even volunteered to teach the matric pupils ballroom dancing after school – she was insistence we should venture into the post-school world with at least basic ballroom skills.
In 1988, during my matric year, Gencor, the mining company, selected my school, with other schools in townships across the country, for pupils to attend a mathematics and science enrichment programme on Saturdays. South African corporates should introduce such STEM enrichment programmes widely in township schools.
The school Principal during my time (1984-1988) was Argie Vergotine, who was also at the time a leading teacher trade unionist. He was the President of the Cape Teachers Professional Association and during the transition from apartheid to democracy was one of the key figures in negotiating the integration of South Africa’s apartheid-era colour, ethnic and politically-segregated teacher trade unions.
Reginald Madjoe, from then Pietersburg, was my science teacher. He came directly from university to teach and was close in age to his pupils. Given our massive township knowledge gaps, he went beyond duty to explain the ideas behind the universal science principles. For me, at times it felt like magic.
Prof Madjoe later went on to study physics at the University of Missouri in the US and returned to become head of Physics at the University of the Western Cape.
Joseph Bouman, from the Northern Cape, like Madjoe came directly from university to teach us mathematics, would later become the principal of the school. Bouman, like Madjoe, taught his subject, mathematics with astonishing passion, clarity, and patience. He had a saying “you must eat, drink and sleep mathematics.” I would often, at the time, in my dreams, battle with mathematics equations.
My former class and biology teacher, the late Ms Marlene Ohlson, was the first person who encouraged me, to stand firm, if one has a contrary opinion, from the popular family, community, religious opinion or of those of dominant political leaders or movements or the state, even if it means standing alone, in the face of implacable, even violent or slandering opposition. At the time, unbeknown to her or me, years of absolutely brutal public and personal attacks against me were laying ahead for me in the then future.
I believed that Ms Ohlson could see right through me. That she could see the sheer exhaustion of my 14-year, who overburdened by adult-like responsibilities, who had experienced and seen what no child should, who was obsessed with Jimi Hendrix’s guitar play, French rugby player Serge Blanco, James Baldwin’s writing and for long periods only dressed in black.
She would not know, how I would often, in the future, hear her voice, in my imagination, saying ‘have faith,’ during my ‘dark times,’ to use the phrase of my favourite political thinker, Hannah Arendt.
I imagined that Ms Ohlson probably intuitively sensed the ‘dark times‘ ahead for me. Ms Ohlsson, I have battled, many times, during ‘dark times,’ to hold onto faith. Thank you, Ms Ohlson. I pray your soul rest in love.
When I got distinctions for physics, chemistry, and biology in my first year at university, and got through mathematics and statistics, I could only tearfully, on my knees, express gratitude to these incredibly dedicated teachers I was fortunate to have.
It only dawned on me long after I matriculated, when travelling, studying, living or working in the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, United Kingdom and the United States, that for example many of the songs I learned, the poetry or the stories I read at school were from across the globe.
I still get chills remembering the lines of two school poems: the Afrikaans poem, ‘Eitemal,’ by WJ du P. Erlank (1901-1984): “Is iemand dood? En wie was sy?;” “‘n Vreemd’ling vra en stap verby;” … “Twee kleintjies, met dik snye brood, Roep: “Omie, onse ma is dood.”
[“Is someone dead? And who is she?;” “’A Stranger ask and walk pass;” … “Two little ones, with thick slices of bread, Call: Uncle, our mom is dead.”] (My translation).
The poem shook me, as I heard it for the first time, when my mom was near-death after a minibus taxi accident, and she had already whispered her last rites to me, to prepare me to take charge of my siblings, as she was unlikely to make it. To this day, I remember every word of that poem.
Or the poem “Out, Out,” by US poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard” ... Five mountain ranges one behind the other, Under the sunset far into Vermont; … “Call it a day I wish they might have said,” … “His sister stood beside them in her apron, To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand.”
It was a hot Cape summer, during the stillness of a midday classroom period, when one could hear sounds from afar, when our English teacher read this poem out aloud. I could visualise the scene described by Robert Frost so frighteningly clearly that sent shivers behind my spine. For years afterwards, the words and the moment, was the source of nightmares for me.
For most of my high school, as the eldest of my siblings, I worked part-time and on weekends, after my mom, a single-parent, was the only survivor of a horrific mini-bus taxi accident in 1983 on Connaught Road, Parow. She was hospitalised for a long period - and never worked since.
I travelled just under two hours to school, half by train, on the Kapteinsklip-Langa line, and half walking. I never found the travelling heavy. Making friends while travelling was easy. If one sees another pupil in school uniform, in the same train compartment on the platform, the norm would be to say hello. After that, one would also be on the lookout for that new travel companion. But I also loved the train travelling because I could read, or worse, do my homework.
The school was a happy place for me, a big reason for it was the caring, far-sighted, and involved teachers.
One of my favourite teachers at the school was Mrs Evelyn Hendricks. She is in her mid-eighties now. She sweetly, recently reached out to me. Remarkably, she had kept her Class Marksheet Book, with the list of her 1985 class pupils and their subject marks, including mine - which she wanted to show me.
In deep gratitude to Mrs Hendricks and all the other teachers, and non-teacher teachers, for their dedication in nurturing children to become well-rounded citizens equipped to navigate complex individual, intimate relationship, workplace, and diverse South African and global societal challenges.
Professor William Gumede is Associate Professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Founder of the Democracy Works Foundation and author of the bestselling Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).
He has been involved for over two decades in school governing bodies in South Africa and the United Kingdom and is a former Trustee of the Ridge Primary School, Westcliff, Johannesburg.
This article is based on the prepared comments he made on the “Changing Role of Teachers” to celebrate “Teachers’ Day, for the Federation of School Governing Bodies. It was first published in Daily Maverick.