Teach A Man To Fish

 This morning I read a political research note written by JP Landman titled ‘The Centre Is Holding’. It was a brief, insightful overview of where South Africa currently stands as a democracy. The document was littered with intertextual reference to Dickens, Yeats’s gyres (which I mentioned not long ago in my own blog) and various other (colonial) examples of when South Africa was on the brink but came back. 

After reading it I wondered how many average South Africans would have had to Google ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ or in-fact the genocide of the Khoi and the San to be able to fully understand the article. As a relatively well-educated person I understood probably 80% of the references that he was making to moments in history and literature and for the rest I relied on my common sense to work it out. When I say relatively well-educated I mean to say that I hold a Masters Degree in Applied Theatre and Dramatic Studies which I completed at the University of Massachusetts and I am a qualified teacher. I have four university degrees. I’m not blowing my own whistle here - my MA supervisor and I can both agree that dragging that thesis out of me was akin to my giving birth to a potjie pot - I am no genius but I am privileged enough to have had an excellent education and I value it every day. 

My point is that even with an excellent education there are many things that I do not understand and am unable to comprehend. I realised this when I was home schooling Gray this week. Despite being an English teacher I am a high school English teacher and the chasm between getting children to follow a line without turning their piece of paper around, to teaching Julius Caesar is vast. So too, incidentally, is teaching English as a foreign language which I terrifyingly discovered a few years ago when teaching my first lesson to an advanced English class of Arabic army leaders. Past participles and all that stuff have never been my jam.

So here I am, with all this education, still trying to understand how underwriting in insurance works , how to calculate house bond repayments, what actually makes electricity and why Peppa Pig’s pet gold fish can’t talk. 

Yesterday Stephen went to our recently looted Watercrest Mall. Things have been repaired, restocked, rebooted. Everything was taken. And if something was too heavy to carry then it was destroyed. Everything, that is, except the book shop. If you will refer to the picture at the top of my blog this is how the Bargain Books emerged from the carnage - untouched. And this for me is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies and the greatest symbols of this entire ordeal. 

To most South Africans books mean nothing. Words mean nothing. Sentences will not put food on the table. Higher education is something for the privileged and has nothing to do with survival. There are literally thousands of young people in this country who did everything in their power to achieve that supposed golden ticket of a matric pass who now have to sit in their poverty watching their lives slowly tick by. Multiply that by several generations and you have a population of hopelessness. And this is how we have failed this country.

In my mind I imagined an alternative- imagine if the book shop had been looted and parents were running into the shop and grabbing all the bound pieces of joy to take home to their children (children who have missed months of education due to the pandemic). Imagine the delight of discovery, and even the simple satisfaction of finding recognisable letters on a page. Imagine teenagers getting their hands on study aids, and philosophy, and dictionaries, and Sol Plaatjie and Terry Pratchett and autobiographies, Chimamanda Adichie and Athol Fugard, DIY, quantum mechanics or whatever floats their literary boats. And all the beauty that a world of words can hold for a young mind right there on the shelves. 

And yet no one took the books.

We cannot begin to rectify this catastrophic failing if we do not put education first. Our leaders need to be educated in the fields they are employed to lead. We need qualified people doing the jobs they are qualified to do. We need to create a plethora of jobs that will speak to the multiples of different intelligences that make up any singular society - from those with a mind for practical, physical industry (not me); to people with a mind for administration and order (also not me) to the empaths whose main job is to get other people excited about learning (me). When we start inspiring people, through education, to do what they love doing then suddenly hope reappears. This also means that not everyone needs to go to university. Not all skills development happens at an academic institution like a university  (which I feel is an unfortunate misconception that many have). And gaining a university degree will not get you a job (this I learnt the hard way). Let’s get the entrepreneurs the skills to do what they do best, and the plumbers theirs, and the engineers, and the builders, and the IT geniuses and the doctors and the teachers. 

And the only way to do this is in the classrooms - all the classrooms. And a classroom can be anywhere. Let’s hope it starts at the top where Cyril finally reshuffles his cabinet to employ leaders qualified in their fields. The classroom of commerce where we start investing in those kids with the golden ticket of matric and a mind for business but not much else. The classroom of makers who have the ability to create something out of nothing but who just need the practical skills to get things going. The spaces for learning are not lecture halls. They are places where passionate people get trained to use their passion for the betterment of themselves and those around them.

Tomorrow our kids go back to school. And it looks like Cyril might let us drink again - coincidence? I think not. Let us be mindful with our children in our education of them. Their first classroom, after all, is home. Let’s commit ourselves to valuing education above all else, let’s work on looting the book shop first in the future. Let’s read to our kids. If we have the opportunity let’s read to kids whose parents might not have the time, inclination or education to read to their kids. Encourage your kids to become teachers if they show a passion for learning. Encourage them to encourage others. Because when we start shaping a generation who values their capacity to think and to improve the lives of others through their own particular giftings then we may finally start building a society made up of people who know exactly what kind of books they enjoy reading. Wouldn’t that be something?