Urgent need to reform education
PROFESSOR Noam Chomsky, Sir Ken Robertson and many others accurately point out that the Western capitalistic educational model kills children’s creativity and succeeds in dumbing down youth into obedient citizens who would prefer to be “stupid” adults who are led by politicians and business magnates, into blind-creativity-starved consumers, to feed their broken selfworth, and enslave the masses through debt (of which education fees are the debt albatross).
Schools are often pigeon holes and conveyor belts that were designed to feed the old industrial revolution. Communism, despotism and fanaticism do the same, not only using schools and media, but also watereddown religion and questionable means to subdue people into accepting exploitative authority.
Today, there are rumours that the Department of Education, which is obsessed with “levelling the playing field between whites and blacks”, is considering making the Independent Education Board (IEB) obsolete.
Whatever the strategies of governments to control education, they will have a negative effect on society. States want citizens to obey to ensure their control through heavy policing.
Something our local government has just vetoed. Is our national government aware that the inherited colonial structures perpetuate the class system Carl Marx analysed?
The denial of the talents, interests, flairs, different cultures and beliefs of the children and their families, while promoting only black/European culture in South Africa is oppressive education.
The dumbing down of society to think like children can be seen in advertisements that speak to viewers/ listeners as if they are gullible.
When watching the Mindset Learn YouTubes that prepare 18-year-old matrics for their final exams, “top” teachers speak as if their audience members are pre-schoolers. We must stop our patronising habits and agree that our schools need new ideas to combat the mindless consumerism that increases debt, because advertising targets dumbed-down youth for brand loyalty.
This can be changed if we refuse educational brainwashing and start using our talents and resources to save the country from ruin – without protests or war.
We now have Holistic Leisure Learning (HLL) to fast-track progress in a value-based manner, but we find few interested in it and some attempts to marginalise it. This is because many have been educated to be critical, and not positive and creative.
It is a disease of negativity fostered in schools and media that prevents innovation and creativity. Let’s save ourselves from blind following and usher in HLL. The first change agents are people who can support the youth through HLL and the NoDebtYouth programme that employs youth (who are still in school or just matriculated) in 33 community needed-projects that will ensure city development. We can then usher in the new Holistic Senior Coaching Certificate with 17 holistically integrated subjects.
The blame game is easier than admitting that our government, educational and management structures are flawed. The many monitoring structures and new compulsory subjects in the State of the Nation Address indicate an obsession with managing people into obedience, rather than accepting innovative ideas to free people from stifling bureaucratic systems.
The president, as a businessman, knows that a business that does not innovate will stagnate, deteriorate and then fail, like the Western educational model is doing – as acknowledged by the World Bank’s Report of September 2017.