No evidence of state valuing SA education
WHAT makes one group of people behave in a racist manner towards another? One has to be able to identify the victims, so a physical or other characteristic is a prerequisite, but is that all that is necessary?
Who feels racially superior to the Chinese these days, when they belong to a nation that is a world power, a manufacturing giant, to which other nations kowtow? Go back 100 years, however, and it was common to hear a Chinese person referred to as a “slope-head” or “slanteye”, or “chink”. No longer.
What about the Irish, with the same physical characteristics as the English, who were referred to in the past as “Paddy” (the term for a bricklayer’s labourer). Not heard or even thought of today, when Ireland no longer exports the unskilled, but instead surgeons and stockbrokers. Hard to think of an Irishman as a “dumb Irish Mick” when he is the paediatrician treating your child.
What does the professional in her car feel towards the beggar at the robots? Compassion, perhaps, but much diminished by the fifth intersection on her way to work. By then that compassion is tinged with con- tempt.
When those beggars become a multitude, or if people one comes across who share identifiable characteristics, have inferior education, rendering them capable only of menial jobs if they have employment at all, well, then you are looking at the average Irishman in England 100 years ago.
What does the beggar feel towards the professional in her car? Resentment, probably, but also a sense of inferiority.
The Chinese and the Irish did something about it. Their schools and universities are of the highest standard. The need for education became a mantra.
Some of us remember the poor white problem in South Africa. Bywoners forced off the land by economic circumstances and unqualified for urban employment, they were identified by their abysmal English and the fact that they could only do menial jobs or were unemployed.
A racist would find it difficult to find japies to denigrate today. They’ve educated themselves and disappeared into the professional classes.
If we value education in modern South Africa, where is the evidence? Despite a huge education budget, our education system underdelivers.
Why? Because our government is in thrall to the unions, and so year after year the budget is squandered on salaries for teaching staff who are unqualified, lazy, corrupt and incompetent, even non-existent. In fact, we are witnessing a massive fraud on our children.
By supinely accepting this, we too are complicit, particularly parents who have children in this odious system.
One suspects that only when the government is punished at the polls will it take seriously its obligation to the people, rather than corrupt special interest groups. And when this government criminalises racism, it might consider that it should be the first to be prosecuted, for cynically and systematically promoting it.
Despite a huge budget, schools
underdeliver
Bryanston, Sandton