Inadequate facilities
DEAR SIR — Two complex, fascinating and worrying educational issues have been raised in the pages of Business Day over the past fortnight — the move by the University of KwaZulu-Natal to make the study of Zulu obligatory in degree studies, and the admissions policy at the University of Cape Town.
I am saddened by my own inability to speak indigenous languages and downcast that schools with which I have been involved were in general not able to introduce such learning, although they tried. One of the reasons for this failure was that formal classroom methods do not lead to competency in speaking the language. In contrast, I came across someone who was able, in one year, through unconventional methods, to get the board of a major corporation (none of the directors could speak the language) to conduct a meeting in Zulu. My suggestion would be to make it a requirement for some mastery of speaking an indigenous language, and to provide effective support for such learning, but not to offer it as a compulsory subject that has to be passed to obtain a degree.
With reference to the discussion between columnist David Gleason and Patricia Lucas of UCT (that scoring more than seven distinctions in matric is regarded as an advantage and that these marks should be higher than the 80% level, on average above 90%), in one school I know, every child in the top maths class would score an A symbol, yet every child was having extra lessons in that subject.
I went back to my old school and looked at the honours boards that recorded the results of the best students — Donald Gordon, Sydney Kentridge, Derek Keys, Johann Kriegler, numerous eminent professors, deans of medical faculties. On their school marks they would not gain admission today.
It seems to me that the underlying weaknesses are not being addressed. Ms Lucas wrote that UCT had more than 24,000 applicants for 4,200 firstyear places and that there are only 220 places for first-year medical students.
Has the country’s capacity for suitable tertiary education and training increased sufficiently for a population that has grown from the 13-million people when I went to university, to over 51million today? Can a love for learning really be developed when there are over 1,000 students in economics 1, and when all tests are of the multiple choice variety?