Educational Apartheid

I have been in schools in Des Moines and Chicago where students come to class hungry because they haven't eaten since lunch the day before, wearing clothes that haven't been washed since the last three times they have been worn, or with bruises scattered all over their bodies from a night of beating either from their parent, family member, or someone from the streets. I have had to leave classrooms for fear of breaking down in front of a room full of fifteen year olds after listening to one of them tell their story. Students in the United States also have a lot going against them systemically. Our schools are underfunded, overcrowded, and our teachers are overworked and underpaid, yet we still have one of the best educational systems in the world. With a degree from the United States, you are employable in any country of your choosing. We are lucky.

South Africa, on the other hand, is facing some of her own serious problems. Apartheid, institutionalized racism, ended in 1994, but people are still feeling the hateful sting of the legislation and guidelines that created the unjust system of today. By being a part of South Africa's educational system through my service site and being a student at University of the Western Cape, I have begun to see exceptional students with high potential fall through the cracks.

Primary and secondary public schools come with a very specific set of issues that started under the Afrikaner regime. Public schools have always struggled getting the money that they need to educate students, which I am beginning to realize is a struggle that reaches substantially farther than the United States. During apartheid, funding was allocated primarily based on the colour of your skin. In the Western Cape, there are few Indians so it was divided between whites, coloureds, and blacks with whites getting the most money, then coloureds, then blacks. Unfortunately, this is still evident today, although there has been legislation passed to combat it. The public schools that I have worked with in black townships have had few, if any, books, posters on the walls, or papers to write on. Students may only have one book per child to read and one workbook to work out of. The bright colors and fun that are seen in the typical American first grade classroom are replaced by grey walls and bars on the windows.

Another problem is absenteeism with instructors. During apartheid blacks had the option to be teachers, nurses, or priests. The notion of answering a vocational call was nonsense. Because of this, it is still common to see black teachers who do not want to be in the classroom and could care less whether or not their children learn. They just need a pay check. In some classrooms teachers will give an assignment and walk out of the room only to return an hour later to write the answers on the board, give another assignment, and leave again. There is very little passion for education among those who are responsible for molding young minds of this country in transition.

Language is also a huge barrier in the schools. In the Western Cape, most, if not all, black students speak Xhosa as their mother tongue, so classes are taught in Xhosa through secondary school, with minimal English spoken. However, their text books and workbooks are in English, as well as all of their assignments. Because of this, students become literate in both Xhosa and English and can understand when spoken to in English for the most part, but struggle to speak the language fluently. This becomes an issues for those students who go on to the university level where all courses are taught in academic English, a language, I confess, that even I struggle to follow sometimes.

At the university level, lecturers fight to overcome these struggles, as well as the personal baggage that students carry with them that come from living in poverty. Therefore, much time is spent backtracking, reteaching things that should have been learned at the primary and secondary level. Information that is usually covered in the states to earn a degree in a specific subject is overlooked because the time needs to be spent teaching basic skills. Degrees from South Africa and other African nations do not carry as much weight in the rest of the world because of this.

So the rainbow nation lies in an interesting rut. In order to pull themselves out of the knots that the apartheid regime tied the country in they must have an educated population dedicated to working for the upward motion of their country, yet the educational system lies in shambles. So what now? How do we break the cycle?