Futurists tell us another truism: the best way to predict the future is to create it. Now, if South Africa intends to plan for a prosperous future, then we most certainly have a strange way of creating it for it is also a fact that the state of our basic education system is not rising to meet the challenges for the future. Without limiting the scope of problems, let me enumerate some that deserve urgent attention:
· The high pass rate in schools masks the fact that the quality of education is substandard and will leave us with a legacy of inadequately schooled workers.
· Inadequate facilities with too few schools being built to ensure mother tongue instruction;
· An inadequate curriculum as follows:
o Firstly, biased social science content that sidelines and demonises the Afrikaner as having contributed only negatively to this country’s development; and
o Secondly, not giving enough attention to skilling our country’s children in science and mathematics;
o Thirdly, prescribed text books contain traces of hate speech and intolerance towards other cultures, especially Afrikaners.
Minister, enige onderwysstelsel wat gebou is op die demonisering van ‘n minderheid, sal sosiale kohesie vernietig en sal moet begroot vir grootskaalse konflik in die toekoms. Die minister moet in ag neem dat die regering verplig is om ingevolge die internasionale reg en die grondwet kulturele regte, veral in die onderwys, te bevorder. Die afskeep van ‘n minderheid word as ‘n internasionale delik beskou.
Afrikaans schools have dwindled to almost 300 at last count. This is nonsensical in light of government’s own pronouncements that demographic reality be the guiding light of social planning. Afrikaans is the third largest language in the country after Zulu and Xhosa with English a distant sixth place. Should Afrikaans schools not actually increase in line with the demographic reality? Yet only Afrikaans schools are forced to accommodate non-Afrikaans-speaking learners. This inevitably leads to the Anglisisation of Afrikaans schools and the destruction of a culture.
We have advice how the minister can address this human rights concern. The answer lies in mother tongue instruction in all eleven official languages. That means the minister will have to build more schools for all language-segments. And the minister will also see that due to mother-tongue instruction that the quality of education will also increase.
Minister, erken jy ‘n taal, dan erken jy ‘n volk. En as jy ‘n volk erken, wen jy hulle goeie trou om ‘n sinvolle toekoms vir almal te skep.
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