Home Sweet Home...and Fired up about Education

Maybe it was the last 8 hour bus ride, maybe it was the 3 weeks on the road, or maybe it was the little struggles with laundry and food choices, but we all breathed a collective sigh of relief to be pulling in to the Check Inn hotel on Wednesday (July 29th) night. We all have commented that our little neon lit hotel, while certainly one of the most basic of our journey, feels like “home.” I think this is also due to the familiarity and safety within Cape Town. It feels great to have all of those restrictions on our movements to be lifted, and for us to again have that freedom and choice of movement. Despite all of the time we have spent together, everyone moved out together en masse to get dinner – a testament to the cohesive and close nature of the group.
I went to bed relatively early because Thursday (30th) is the day that we are going into schools around Cape Town. I didn’t know that we would be divided amongst 4 schools, but it makes sense that it is easier and less distracting than having 25 teachers wandering through the hallways. I ended up at the Ode Moden School of Science and Technology with three other teachers. The focus of the school is to direct students towards careers in engineering, architecture, and other technical jobs. It is a comparatively expensive school, with tuition of R8,900 ($1,100) per year, while township schools are R40 ($5) per year and for most of the students, their parents are struggling to pay. We toured the school and definitely garnered a lot of interested stares. After the tour I was assigned into an English classroom where students are learning English as a 2nd (actually, more like a 3rd or 4th) language. The students were in 11th grade, just like most of the students that I teach at West. All of the students here wear uniforms, and it was no exception here. They all wear grey pants, white shirts, striped ties, and navy blue jackets affixed with the school emblem on the chest. The seniors (or matrics, as they are called here) are distinguished by a sky blue coat instead. The first thing I noticed is that the students line up in a single file line outside the classroom door and talk amongst themselves or to the teacher. After a few minutes, they are invited into the room where they proceed to stand behind their chairs. They responded to her greeting with a “good morning” in unison, and to my introduction with a “good morning Ms. Clark.” I was totally blown away with the formality as I am picturing my students flooding into my room and the 5 minutes of controlled chaos that is passing time. This was the last of their strict behavior, because they were quite chatty for the rest of the class. This day they were working on developing argumentative oral reports. They were previously assigned topics, and today was the day to finish and present. The teacher asked that I work with groups to help them develop their projects. The students were excited to have me come to their groups, and it was amazing to be able to talk one-on-one with them.

One of the interesting topics was over corporal punishment in schools. Most of the groups who had this topic felt that corporal punishment should be reinstated in schools to help control “kids today.” When I asked a boy how he thought it would help, he told me that last week one student stabbed another with a scissors for flicking a piece of paper at him from across the room. He felt that the threat of physical pain could have prevented that act, and that even if it didn’t, a person has no right to hurt another person and should be therefore be hurt. As I am shocked, and looking for the right words to respond with I am also looking at this kind 17 year old boy, his hands casually in his pockets, when he just shrugged at me. A look that showed a kind of small sadness and just general resignation to the way things are in his world. There is a startling amount of school violence here. In fact, I have heard several people say “Columbine happens all the time here.” This information is shocking and I hesitated to even share it, for fear that I would leave anyone with the wrong impression of education and life in the country. I share it because it made me realize how long it takes to overcome years in a cycle of violence that was perpetuated by poverty and inequality that still exists today. There are lots of good, functioning schools, but as it is in the U.S., not all schools are created equal. For example, urban schools such as the Milwaukee Public Schools struggle with issues that the suburban schools do not even experience.
As a teacher, I passionately believe in the power of public education to uplift and change individuals, and as a result, a society. It has never been more evident to me than it is here. The township schools are lacking in supplies, have huge class sizes (50 to 60 in one room), and a huge gang problems, all of which partially contributes to teacher reliability issues. Many of my colleagues in other schools reported to us that teachers simply didn’t show up. There is no substitute system, so classes were just not being conducted during those times. This seemed to corroborate a seemingly astonishing recent study I heard about on the morning news: 70% of schools do not have a library, 60% do not have a lab (for science), and 65% of all teachers say they would leave the profession if they could. There is an obvious problem with teachers, but there are also larger problems within the system. The pay is disturbingly low – a teacher I talked to who has 19 years of experience makes R 6,000 per month ($750) after taxes! Aside from that, there are poor conditions, scarce resources, and limited support. Again, in the United States, we struggle with many of the same issues, but on a smaller scale. We too have seen a devaluing of the teaching profession and of education itself within society. We see class sizes creeping up, requirements being reduced instead of strengthened, and resources diminishing as funding and the resulting budgets get cut.
My perceptions of education in this country were only heightened as I heard these students tell me about local gangs in one breath and their plans to become engineers and architects in the next. Their dreams are a sign of a hope for students, who just 15 years ago wouldn’t have the same thoughts, ideas, or opportunities. However, these students are only a portion of the children in South Africa. The students struggling in the township schools are struggling beyond belief. I hope for the future of this country (and ours for that matter) that the education system will undergo huge improvements that will show these kids that they have good reason to hope for their futures.
Feeling inspired to get back to work!