Education foundation should be primary (schools) concern

THERE was a sad comment on the letters page of a Sunday newspaper this weekend, saying something like, “If you pay nothing for your university degree it will be worth nothing”. It made sense to me. My parents used to say, “you get nothing for nothing”.

One thought that occurs to me is that all the free degrees in the world mean nothing at all if you can’t find a job afterwards. You can’t spend degrees, or eat them.

Until you put the education to work, the degree is a piece of paper. Until it earns you some money, you can’t even afford a frame for it.

A more important thought is that it’s not actually tertiary education that needs fixing in our country. We may churn out an annual crop of graduates clutching impressive looking scrolls, but at the time we are churning out thousands of illiterate school leavers who can’t even read or write intelligently.

In effect we’re building fairy palaces on foundations of straw.

It’s not universities or colleges of technology that need urgent attention; it’s primary schools. The country urgently needs to pour billions of rands into training junior school teachers who will give children the essential foundation of an education.

Instead we chose to shut down the old teachers’ training colleges. Now we are stuck with about 50% of Grade 4 pupils who don’t know how to read. It won’t do any good to offer them free tertiary education. They can’t read textbooks, they can’t write essays, so what will they spend their student years doing? Operating fidget-spinners?

That’s probably a good choice. Fidget spinners don’t have puzzling features like the numbers or letters you were expected to know in Grade 4. Unfortunately nobody has yet discovered a way to earn a decent income by operating a fidget spinner. It’s the only sport that hasn’t turned professional yet.

I wonder whether our country’s policy planners have considered the possibility of paying primary school teachers salaries that attract the right sort of people. We seem to afford vast sums of money for keeping politicians and civil servants supplied with free houses and fancy cars and free air travel.

Maybe we could even divert a small portion of the cost of those perks into improving the quality of primary school education.

The offer of good salaries might even tempt good teachers back into the profession, after they’ve left for more lucrative careers like selling shoes or mowing lawns.

Teaching is darn hard work and not for the faint-hearted.

Last Laugh

A young woman went to a plastic surgeon and asked whether she could have a bust enlargement.

After discussing the procedure, the surgeon assured her it would be perfectly possible and told her what it would cost.

She thought about it and asked: “Will the scars be visible?”

“Young lady,” said the doctor, “that’s entirely up to you.”