Learn from neighbours to fix ailing education system

THE GOVERNMENT spends much more money on education when compared with its SADC counterparts, Botswana and Zimbabwe, yet their education systems are superior.

The late former US president John F Kennedy said: “A child miseducated is a child lost.”

The crop of youngsters in our public schools proves the truthfulness of this observation as the SA education system is designed to teach children the CPF (Cram-PassForget) formula and thereafter spit them out into the abyss of hopelessness and inequality.

This one-size-fits-all approach to education denies “slow” pupils who would rather work with their hands a first-class ticket to opportunity.

We know we have a generation of lost children when half the children who start Grade 1 don’t make it to Grade 12, when there’s a burgeoning class of unemployable youth.

A meritocratic state must replace the current kakistocracy to stem the influx of lost children. How? By finding out what Zimbabwe and Botswana are doing right, and introducing entrepreneurship as a subject. Joburg