Sad state of schooling renders Freedom Day null and void

NE SHOULD be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise,” said F Scott Fitzgerald.

I was reminded of this quote when I visited a school in Mpumalanga recently.

I arrived at the school at about 7am. This was to help me understand my audience better. Their walk showed hopelessness. Their conversation lacked inspiration as some of them were already complaining about why they had to wake up to come to school on that particular Thursday morning.

That I was their guest that morning did not make them shy or hold back on talking about the hopeless exercise of coming to school. They were dressed neatly in their uniforms, clean shirts tucked in, clean skirts and shiny shoes with a few of the boys already enjoying their “morning fix” – cigarettes.

Some of the boys knew me, so they greeted: “Sho bra KayBee, howzit?” When they saw me. “Eita bros, I am good and yourselves?” I replied.

Without hesitation I asked them what was the worst thing about that morning.

One of them said: “It is coming here to listen to these teachers telling us the same thing and yet we remain in the same state of destitute.”

They are seemingly hopeless. Their hopelessness got me thinking about the significance of the commemoration of Freedom Day tomorrow to these pupils.

Even though they have access to education, their education in the villages is poor – it is very much below par.

Their education system does not advocate for excellence. It says to the pupils: get a mere 30% and you have “passed”.

We may be commemorating Freedom Day tomorrow as a nation, but many South Africans are yet to taste this freedom in the most significant way.

For those young people, who are even younger than our democracy, the freedom we are celebrating plays such a little role in their lives. Some said: “We have schoolmates who pass with flying colours. But after Grade 12, they roam the streets with us like they were not the bright shining stars in class.”

These are young people who are supposed to be beaming with excitement.

These are some of the young lives in our country who are supposed to be the future leaders and game changers of tomorrow. But they are covered with a dark cloud of hopelessness.

Myself and many others who have had the privilege to walk into lecture halls and end up graduating take it for granted that these learners have far more challenges than we had. Their hopelessness is not something to be taken lightly.

They have been dealt a bad hand. But that should not really deter them.

It seems like the more our hard fought for democracy matures, the more the unfortunate and more previously disadvantaged are forgotten.

Schools in Pretoria and Joburg are going paperless. But kids in villages like where I come from are still day dreaming of having desktop computers to help them do research for their assignments, to help those in matric start searching for bursaries and send applications to various higher learning institutions.

The Freedom Day we celebrate tomorrow is yet to be meaningful to these young lives. Freedom for them means better schooling resources. To them here is what freedom means:

Last, freedom means school being a place that give them hope.

Sadly, they do not have any of the things that define or bring meaning to freedom. They remain “unfree” in the democratic South Africa.

Happy Freedom Day in advance.