As I go from province to
province, I have become very familiar with being guided to a school step by
step. “Take the exit, turn right and then call me.” And after the next phone
call, “Go straight, turn at the t-junction, and when you see a primary school
on your right, call me.” Then a third set of instructions. A couple of weeks ago, in Katlehong, outside
of Johannesburg, I missed a turn and the principal had to come get me and guide
me to the school.
Some schools simply exist in
an area and for others, that space has meaning. I had only read a little about
Katlehong, but this school’s founding, its history and its present are grounded
in the space.
Phumlani Secondary School
was started in 1993. “It was the last school formed in the area by the previous
government,” Principal Shumi Shongowe told me. “There was a fight, a war
between the IFP and the ANC, the soldiers that were deployed by the previous
government... People were killing each other. There was blood all over. And
there was no time even to bury those that were dead.”
Then he paused, looked up
and calmly said, “And it is then that this school was started.”
It was a reminder to me of
the painful history of this country and the trauma and chaos out of which so much,
including this school, has been born.
Many people who work in
schools say that uniforms help with discipline and focus, but I rarely hear
that the blues and yellows and greens and maroons have any meaning. Surrounded
by brutal violence in 1993, Shongowe consciously chose the school colors. Red
for the blood that was spilled. White for the hope that remained. “To say,” he
told me, “after some time, all this shall be over and life shall go back to
normal.”
In 1994, that was a new
normal, one might say.
The school has grown from
200 students and a 5 percent pass rate in 1993 to 1,783 students and a 94
percent pass rate in 2012.
These 1,783 learners also
find meaning in the uniform. “I call it a uniform of success,” one learner told
me. “People who are in jail, not that I’m criticizing, but people who are in
jail, they are wearing a uniform of regret. So this is a uniform of success.” The
nuance and generosity he extended to prisoners with the use of the word regret struck me. Not violence, evil or wrong,
but regret.
Just after our interview
with the principal, I casually peered into the school’s log book and amazed
that it reaches back to the very establishment of the school and reads like a
historical journal:
Sept 6, 1993: There was a
national stay away called by the African National Congress and the alliances.
The entire work force and the schooling community responded positively to the
stay away and therefore teaching and learning did not take place.
April 22, 1994: Due to
excitement of the first democratic election in the Republic of South Africa and
the usage of the school building by the IEC for elections, education in our
school came to a standstill.
May 10 1994: The
inauguration of the state president. The whole world came to South Africa as
Mr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was inaugurated as the first Black president of
the Republic of South Africa.
My mandate here is to
identify keys to success. I often find that while those keys are unique, they
really should be commonplace. One
principal only hires teachers who studied that subject in college or
university. That seems fairly basic, right? How can a history teacher teach
biology? How can an Afrikaans teacher switch to technology, as I saw happen at
one school? This too often happens as teachers are moved from subject to
subject to fill gaps, despite a lack of training.
In another example, at Tetelo
Secondary School in Soweto, Principal Linda Molefe and his staff end the year with
a two-day meeting where they create a comprehensive plan for the following year.
Acknowledging that plans constantly shift and change once the year begins, he
said, “We can start right away because we know where we’re going.”
I always ask about parent
involvement because I know it’s a critical factor but often very difficult to
achieve. Both principals emphasized that getting the parents to show up wasn’t
enough. It was their obligation to teach parents how to be involved, to be clear
about what is expected of them.
One principal has created an
easy way for parents or grandparents, regardless of their education, to check
their children’s progress. It involves simple numeric indicators. “Some of
these grannies, they have never been at school… it is your responsibility to
try and school them. To say what role are you expecting them to play. And these
grannies with the issue of indicators, they also become excited because they
can now get involved and give support to their granddaughters and grandsons.”
I have a new word for
moments in these journeys that surprise me. I now call them “Acapello moments.”
At Phumlani Secondary, a group of boys approached me and asked if I would film
their singing group. I was blown over when I heard the harmony that came from the
mouths of these boys, the noises they created through snapping and percussive
beats. It was like nothing I had
heard before at a school in South Africa. The Soul Singers (as you may have
guessed) are an acapello group.
The accapello moment at
Tetelo Secondary came at the very end of the day, during mandatory study time
for grade 12 learners. Because of the heat, many bring desks and chairs
outside. We found one group of about 10 learners sitting under a tree, intently
studying physics, debating and teaching one another. They traded off being the
teacher, chalk in hand, using the side of a Cell C container to write on. (If you aren’t in South Africa, this
looks like a shipping container and you often find them in townships. They
usually have public phones inside. I am not sure why this one was on school
grounds.)
The irony was not lost on me
that these kids were choosing to learn under a tree in a country where for
years children like them had to learned under trees. I shouldn’t speak of it in
the past sense, since this still happens in some rural schools.
When I flew back to Cape
Town on Friday morning, there was an article in the newspaper about an
Education Charter that was recently put forward by the South African Human
Rights Commission. The charter offers rules and recommendations to the
government on giving quality education to all children. It addresses issues
like crowded classrooms, suggesting that pupil teacher ratios not exceed 1 to
40 for grades 1 to 12. It has a series of ambitious deadlines to meet aims for
everything from reduced class size to electricity and running water for all
schools, to making sure schools have other basic and essential services needed
to teach and learn properly.
The Charter is filled with
incredible goals to improve education across the country. I hate to be pessimistic, but I just
don’t understand how they are going to fix so much so quickly. At Phumlani, the
1738 students are based in an old primary school building. The principal says
he is basically running two schools. At Tetelo, I saw students mopping out
their container classrooms in the morning because it had rained the night
before and the classrooms leak. In the midst of the cleaning and mopping, some
were polishing shoes and straightening ties.
So how will the government
build enough classrooms and buildings so these students aren’t packed 65 in a
class and don’t have rain dripping on their books? To have actual libraries and
labs rather than a lab on a cart that is pushed from class to class.
I remain somewhat doubtful,
but hopeful and I’ll wait and see. In the meantime, maybe the government should
bring some of these principals to other schools to share their best practices. “There
is no recipe for success,” Principal Molefe from Soweto told me. But I think
sharing ingredients would be a good start.
