Education

Zinhle Sokhela:  PCB Director

What needs to be done in our country to provide youth with the opportunity to become entrepreneurs and or leaders in their communities?   The Youth are the Leaders of Tomorrow.  The realization of this fact is often the beginning of the desire to institute policies and programmes, both from business and government, to achieve the desired objectives.   Having noted the importance of entrepreneurship, our government has initiated many policies which seek to promote SMME’s .  It is unfortunate that most of these programmes have not had the desired results.  In fact, these programmes are often ‘one-size fits all’, but they are still not targeted appropriately at the youth, and awareness of the programmes is lacking.   Maybe it is high time that we devise a strategy as to how these programmes are tailored to fit the needs of our youth.

However, the great concern remains with our education system.

I am sure the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande, will agree with me on this.  In an article in the local newspaper, the Minister raised his observations about our education system.   The problem is that our education system is biased towards academic studies that focus on channelling pupils into universities, and not colleges and technical institutions.   Parents tend to support this bias because there remains some stigma about ‘technical’ education and parental ambitions are sometimes unrealistic.  Added to this is the fact that universities are bound to accept matriculants with exemption and not others who have not achieved this level of matric pass.

Rural youth tend to be poorly educated, especially in comparison to urban youth.  Not only are the schools under-resourced generally, but teachers are often reluctant to teach in rural areas.   In a report which resulted from several years of meetings involving representatives of the various education department prior to 1994, it was recommended that an allowance should be paid to rural teachers to encourage them to commit to rural communities.    As it came to pass, this was not possible.   It is worth considering that many of the education policy-makers have been based in Gauteng or the Western Cape where the extraordinary challenges of educating rural children are not well understood.   Neither of these provinces have schools that are inaccessible because of their remote rural locality.   

It is generally acknowledged that many communities lack the leadership which could galvanise people into embracing activities that might result in community-induced progress.  South Africans often wait patiently for government to come and improve their circumstances.   If we really want to empower rural youth, we must introduce leadership programmes in the educational syllabus from primary school to the tertiary levels.  This will inculcate in the students, from an early stage in life, the qualities required of them to lead communities in the future.    At the same time, they will be trained for positions of responsibility whether in the formal or informal sectors of the economy.      

If we are expecting the youth to play their role in rural and disadvantaged communities, issues of poverty, hunger, homelessness, lack of security and sickness require immediate attention of all the stakeholders.  What can you expect from a hungry person to provide constructive and effective leadership and become a person of influence?      And this is not the only concern.   Lots of research has revealed the extent to which hunger and malnutrition erodes stamina and the ability to concentrate.  Hungry children cannot perform as well at school as those who are properly nourished.    That is why school feeding schemes are so important, yet they have often been badly tainted by corrupt practices.  It all points to the fact that curriculum alone cannot be regarded as the major factor in an effective education system.   Nor is it simplistically to do with textbooks.   It involves motivated and cheerful teachers who are content to teach in the country, encouraging school environments rather than clear examples of inequitable deprivation, sound family support, the alleviation of hunger and leadership.

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