CRITICAL THINKING IS VITAL TO OUR SURVIVAL
I THINK all South Africans realise the importance of education in world society. In matric 1971, my biology teacher, the enigmatic Fred Coker, said: “I would rather be an unemployed educated person than a non-educated person.”
I thought about this my entire life. We have many educated people in our country saying that a job is more important than being educated.
These people believe that if jobs are created people will rather go for jobs than be educated.
Why do we have to be part of the drive to get people educated? We are fortunate that as Homo sapiens (the wise ones) we have a creative brain (whether evolved or a snap of a finger by a higher being) that can think. This is the brain that some people feel needs to be controlled, manipulated and suppressed.
Most governments around the world create institutions to control the thinking of people. They develop rules to control the minds of people.
Students are told that universities take the students with the best results even though the applicants qualify to enter a university. Universities have used the pandemic of Covid-19 to not even let prospective students get past their heavily guarded entrances.
Here school principals must challenge the university authorities as to why more facilities and teaching staff are not allocated by our government to allow more students into our universities.
We as progressive thinkers do our students a great disservice. I always told the students at the school where I taught for 39 years, and where I was also a student, that if you qualify for a course of study at a university and you are not accepted I will personally accompany you to the university and do battle with the university to get you admitted.
As one of my female colleagues at the school where I taught said to her students: “Education is a serious matter!” She was spot on.
We need the critical thinkers in our society to become more verbal. Espouse your views at your place of work. Expose your thinking in the written media. Do not stand back because of the opposition of the people in power.
In my teaching career, I enjoyed challenging the thinking of students, teachers and parents about education. I remember in an assembly I spoke about how big businesses in South Africa exploits the workers and I criticised big business for this. A matric student put up his hand in the assembly and said: “Sir, I believe that capitalism is the answer and I am going to own my own supermarket one day.”
The students, I think, enjoyed this spat between the two of us. Today this student is an owner of two supermarkets. I hope he treats the workers well.
Critical thinking is vital to our survival as human beings. Who would have thought that ordinary individuals in Cape Town could take on a global organisation and stop a building on the banks of a river? Individuals holding hands can make a big difference in society.