TEACHERS MUST WORK FOR PROGRESSIVE SYSTEM
I HAVE been out of the National Department of Basic Education (NDBE) for seven years and every day I ponder how we can create a dynamic education system in South Africa which will serve all its citizens.
One thing that is clear to me is that the majority of retired teachers do not want to dirty their hands by working in education voluntarily. They feel they have spent 30-40 years in the profession and it is time for them to spoil themselves. Can you blame them? They have faced enough obstacles from the Education Department.
I believe that unless the majority of in-service teachers get involved in the running of education, the education system in SA will deteriorate.
When I entered teaching in 1977, separate teacher organisations for the different race groups existed. There were two progressive teacher organisations, the Teachers League of SA (TLSA) and the Cape African Teachers' Association (Cata). These two organisations worked together and fought for a non-racial education system.
The apartheid government smashed these two organisations by banning and expelling teachers from both of the groups.
Bennie Kies and Richard Dudley were two such teachers, and there were hundreds of others.
The racist teacher organisations were allowed to flourish, like the Cape Teachers’ Professional Association (CTPA), the South African Teachers’ Association (Sata) and Suid Afrikaanse Onderwys Unie (SAOU). Promotion posts were regularly handed out to teachers from these organisations.
A person like Dr RO Dudley could never become the principal at an excellent school like Livingstone High in Claremont because he was considered too political.
Today we have a situation where, if we had unity among the teacher unions in SA, there would have been many catastrophes that we could have prevented.
We could have insisted on a workable student-teacher ratio of 1:30, the prevention of Outcomes Based Education in 1998, the dismissal of 20 000 teachers in 1996, the shutdown of teacher training colleges in 1998, the shutting down of schools in the early 2000s. We could have held the Education Department to account.
In the Western Cape, the retrogressive Western Cape Education Department (WCED), because of the reintroduction of separate education departments (9 provincial education departments), was allowed to dismiss a progressive-thinking principal like Mr Wesley Neumann of Heathfield High because he was concerned about the safety of his students during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I sincerely hope that the Education Labour Relations’ Department (ELRC) of SA in February 2023 will instruct WCED to reinstate Mr Neumann at his principal's post at Heathfield High.
I certainly hope that the Minister of the NDBE will become more progressive as we move forward. That the provincial MECs for education and provincial heads of education will use their important positions to become progressive thinkers and doers.
The teachers too must work actively in their teacher unions to fight for the rights of their colleagues. Very often I hear the complaint from teachers: “My union is doing nothing for me.” Teachers, you know of course what the question should be.