"Curriculum 2005" - A Recipe For Disaster?
"The scope of the educational change essential for transforming
South Africa into the truly non-racial, non-sexist and democratic
society we have all been struggling for is vast". (TLSA Conference
Presidential Address 1 April 1997. P20). Amid a lavish Cultural
Display during April this year, the Minister of Education launched
the "Curriculum 2005" Programme for the reform of education.
The programme, he immodestly claimed, would bring about a revolution
in education in South Africa. On the basis of what has emerged
thus far from the Ministry of Education such a claim can only
be causing grave consternation among serious educators. For the
loyal idolators of the remains of the government of national unity
the performance at the launch in front of the Houses of Parliament
in Cape Town provided a satisfying colourful circus act. The Curriculum
2005 plan followed upon the launch of the national "Culture
of Learning and Teaching" initiative. This latter roadshow
itself followed upon the disastrous retrenchment and sacking of
nearly 16000 mainly experienced, well-qualified and desperately-needed
teachers. This was yet another stage in robbing the schools throughout
the country of a significant part of precisely that component
upon which, in the final analysis, the success or failure of the
reconstruction of education must necessarily depend.
Of symbolism there was much at Professor Bengu's
performance. Thousands of multi-coloured balloons soared above
the gathering, to disappear in the clouds, finally to burst when
the pressures within them became too great for the fabric of which
they were made. Much as the Curriculum 2005 programme threatens
to do, because the factors that must bind together a rational
educational plan are missing in the fabric of that programme.
Sadly, the event that must have grabbed the imaginations of the
hundreds of schoolchildren assembled for the occasion was the
antics of an agile breakdancer, whose movements seemed to defy
even the force of gravity as he spun around on his hands, barely
touching the ground beneath him. It was a portent of what the
Ministry of Education might well be trying to do - with the intellects,
ideals, hopes and human potential in a future South Africa.
It will be very necessary to monitor the way in which
the Curriculum 2005 plan is to be implemented during a period
of six years, starting with Grades 1 (Sub A) and 7 (Std 5) in
1998. Not only have eight areas of learning been defined. The
ministry has set up within the framework of its "outcomes-based"
education many aims which are hardly new in education, but which
are intended to negate those aims that have dominated education
in this country for a very long time. Many of the "new"
aims have gained emphasis only because the generalisations about
the present system have been so framed as to highlight the virtues
of the new.
If indeed the minister's claim that Curriculum 2005
will revolutionise education and therefore the lives of the youth
has any meaning, it does not seem to enjoy the support of critical
students of education in this country. The president of the Teachers'
League made a searching analysis of the question of whether these
new initiatives spelt "Progress or Retardation?" The
quotation with which this article began is a pithy observation
concerning the shaky and shallow foundations upon which the Bengu
plan proceeds.
Ludicrous indeed is the stated plan of having two-hour
sessions with practising teachers over some ten days to acquaint
them with the aims and methods, content and school organisation
that make up part of the programme. This country has had instant
tea and coffee, instant soup for decades. It invented "kitskonstabels"
to try and solve the crime problem. The first two were a success.
The last a conspicuous failure. There is even less chance of producing
instant educators within the existing framework of education.
For a variety of reasons the overwhelming number of teachers in
the schools are notoriously ill-qualified. The great majority
of schools are ill-equipped to embark upon the innovations ballooning
up in the imaginations of the promoters of the Bengu plan.
Quite clearly we at present have a finance-starved
system. The proposed system will demand as a foundation vast improvements
both in the matter of the numbers of schools, the equipping of
new and existing institutions and in the preparation of the new
teaching materials - even to switch from the "rote"
learning to learning by the cultivation of critical thinking.
Equally clearly the provision of that extra funding will depend
upon nothing short of a dramatic economic miracle in South Africa.
The poverty of the philosophy that drives the Curriculum 2005
vision is matched by the present financial poverty of education.
Research has shown how many thousands extra teachers
and schools are needed to carry out structural reform over five
years to wipe out "backlogs" which penetrate all CURRENT
added needs. If the 1997-8 budget is any guide, this country will
begin the 1998 year with a loan debt nearing R350 billion - which
is ten times as big as the current budget for primary and secondary
education. And the "system" will start with nearly 16000
teachers fewer, 16000 experienced, qualified and sorely-needed
educators retrenched in yet another stage towards achieving "equity".
That human capital cannot be replaced overnight. Less so, since
the collapse of the morale of the teacher corps in this country
must lead to two further disasters: the loss of even more practising
teachers unable to stand the pressures of a collapsing system
AND the reluctance of many worthwhile persons to adopt a career
in education and to train in colleges and universities.
If the Eiselen-Verwoerd system has taught anything
it is that a retrograde schooling and university system cannot
but reproduce itself and create successive generations of ill-trained
and poorly-motivated teachers among its deprived students who
miraculously proceed to teacher-training institutions.
It is equally significant that certain instant leaders
of progressive education, wage-strikes, catch-up (or learning
by rote) programmes have abandoned the schools to take up posts
in central and provincial government offices - to escape both
the chaos that prevails and the future chaos they are so ardently
planning. Their complicity in this is shown in the simple, but
disastrous, case where, in co-operation with the provincial education
ministers in the Education Labour Relations Council, they supported
Resolution 3 of 1996. In that resolution they traded off promises
of salary increases for the next three years for their help in
setting in motion the process of stripping the teacher corps of
16000 members so as to save the State's financial bacon. The job
done, they slunk off into the greater security and cushiness of
jobs within the ministries at greatly increased salaries.
If the plan is to accelerate the Bengu "transformation",
reality is going to prove a hard taskmaster. Reference has already
been made to the generally poor qualifications of the teacher
corps. In one specific area at least the plan to update teacher
skills with the two-hourly catch-up programmes will prove absurd.
A very recent study financed here by Scandinavian Government grants
showed that in seven of the provinces 60% of Mathematics and 70%
of Science teachers were not qualified or competent to teach those
subjects and had little understanding of the fundamentals of content
and method. (The Western Cape and Eastern Province were excluded
from the survey.) Since Mathematics and Physical Science are among
the key learning areas, "catch-up" in these areas will,
with present facilities, take longer than the full term (six years)
for the Curriculum 2005 miracle to occur.
The facts are only too well known. The introduction
of the "new Maths" programme was largely an unmixed
disaster. The language problems are stubborn, unyielding and incapable
of solution upon the basis of the primary and secondary records
of achievement up to the present. The continuing under-performance
of the universities and colleges trapped in Verwoerdian debasement
is STILL a barrier that has to be broken down. Yet before us lies
the very negation of the prospects of making a breakthrough in
the schools.
Within the systems pursued by both the old and the
new government the schooling system has come to emphasise even
more the class divisions within the schools. The combination of
poverty, social decay and rotten school facilities will remain
the context in which the Curriculum 2005 miracle is supposed to
occur - for the overwhelming majority of schools where the "previously
disadvantaged" will continue to be disadvantaged.
On the other hand, the Model C schools, now incorporated
into the "State schools" category, will with better
facilities and greater financial resources be able not only to
forge ahead but also to escape the worst effects of the foggy,
ill-constructed curricula planned for the future. That applies
equally to the day-to-day teaching and to a developing within
the ranks of the learners those skills, values and attitudes that
must equip them to face the future with assurance. Such schools
will provide access only to the children of parents able to afford
the costs of sending their offspring to them. If a colour bar
has been removed a new class-distinction based upon economic status
is increasingly taking its place. So much for the Bengu revolution.
It will be no more firmly based on sound foundations than the
antics of breakdancing, which does not even allow for fancy footwork!
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL VOL.67 #3, OFFICIAL ORGAN
OF THE TEACHERS' LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA, APRIL - MAY 1997]
EDITOR: Mrs. HN Kies, 15 Upper Bloem Street, Cape Town, 8001
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