I did matric twice, once in 'b stream' and the second time in 'a stream', many moons ago.
Now I was an 'a stream' student all through my school years, but when I chose my subjects for standard 9, one of those was industrial arts, a subject that not many with so called brains had chosen. The result was that I found myself in a class of guys that were not sure if they should have left school in standard 8 to go to tech or drop out. There were two of us a streamers in this 'b stream' class. At the end of that year I was told that my standards had dropped and I was no longer ellegible to complete matric in 'a stream' unless I really jacked myself up. Mission impossible in the class I was in. The same fate was reserved for the other 'a stream' guy, who also repeated matric with me.
Looking back I realise that there was no way I would have been able to keep up the higher standards in a class where lower standards were acceptable. I would have had to achieve 110% in everything and do extra work after school just to have a fighting chance. No one had advised or probably realised that I was going downhill during the standard 9 year never to recover. I certainly did not know or realise what was happening.
The point of sharing this, is to show a few things:-
- The learner may not have the wherewithall to know what is expected or what a potential outcome will be of an action
- There is always a potential for the standard to develop at the lowest brain capacity in a class
- The teacher should be aware of what each student is capable of and compare that to the actual.
- The parent may assume that the school has their children's interests at heart and not be aware of potential failure, despite ensuring attendance and homework being done.
So I see a peter principle here (Every Learner Tends to Rise to their own Level of Incompetence), fueled by teachers who are not able to or not interested in attending to individual needs and abilities. Here were can probably point to the system, not properly training teachers and then sending them out into classrooms that have too many learners. I do not know what the student/teacher ratio is or should be but this is a factor that I have not seen or heard being discussed out there in the real world.
Parents are barely equipped to be parents never mind teachers as well. I think their duty is to see that there is discipline in the child, make sure they attend school and ensure that the child is doing some homework and extra school activities to develop a social framework. Other than that, most are working all day to pay school fees to ensure the child is taught by a professional or competent teacher.
One parent process that can help change abilities in South Africa is the situation where the grand parents look after children especially in their developing years. At the most crucial stages of growth being the first 7 years of our lives, the child is lovingly looked after by a person who is two generations behind. How can they ever be expected to catch up given that weight. Parents must take on the role they were designed to do, if we are to catch up with the rest of the western world. Current technology and teachings must be introduced to the child in the current world not at a later stage.
Education is a process of bring out the knowledge in each person - not pumping it in. This means we need to emphasis individual abilities and the methods of teaching should involve a process to develop the learners understanding of themselves and what they are capable of. Life skills and the use of current technology with a solid basic grounding in the various subjects are what is important.
Matric is just a pass to go into a higher education field - its not a beez knees thing to assume that you know something. A bachelor's only tells us, that a general understanding of a specific area of interest has been reached, it also is not the greatest thing in the world. Until the learner has some experience and can apply the knowledge they have extracted, they are useless to all.
Its a long slog and unless you know the end goals, the potentials and have life plan or an understanding on how life works you are at a complete disadvantage. Just because you are in Matric or even in grade eleven getting ready to do matric year does not guarantee that you are capable or have the inclination to do the work. Most learners I would imagine are just following a system and doing what is expected of them - why is the system then putting so much pressure on them to complete something they may not want to complete or have a feeling for?
We need all sorts of people of all levels of abilities in a country. Some will need to know about romeo and juliet and some will want to know stuff that can only be learnt on the job. Why insist on a high percentage pass rate when we should be concentrating on channeling and focusing ex learners into the economy to drive us forward? If we spend more energy in vocational guidance and see the potential in an individual based on their interests rather than a piece of paper, surely that individual would be more productive and once guided correctly be able to study further and become skilled in his work rather than be an uninterested generalist who actually knows nothing.
Did you like this article? Share it with your favourite social network.