I arrived in the last five minutes of a session that seemed to be about attitudes; the facilitator spoke a lot about inner strength and power so I assume it had something to with self awareness, consciousness, et ceteraness. The group of 30ish students were not engaged. They held their own conversations, bundled in collectives of three or four. The facilitator needed to shout to get her message across, sometimes they listened. Covering the walls were body maps; each student had drawn themselves, emphasising the important components of their identity. "God forgives, I don't" was the motto draped across the body closest to me. Most of the pictures had some reference to life on the margins, and the carefully scrawled lettering indicated a marginal education.
Ok, I thought, tough crowd. There were only two women in the group, they sat together in front of a pillar. I was nervous, it was hot. Really hot. Today is one of those Cape Town days when the cooling wind abandons the city and you sit in your car with the windows down and the fan on, leaning forward so that your shirt doesn't get all warmly wet and stick to your back. The guys in the room all wore jeans, most of them hoodies and zip-up tops. I knew it would be pointless to ask them to de-hood, so they sat as a barely conscious audience, settled in their sweaty seats, beyond distraction. My session today was one hour, not two, I had my crayons and my newsprint paper, I took a deep breath...
At the end of the session, I shook my head at myself.
The students, in their hoodies and big shoes, had kind of been ok. Maybe more than ok on reflection. I had to repeat the instructions for the first activity multiple times, upside-down and inside-out and in as many different ways as I could think. But they'd done it. Every last one of them. And they'd shared in the big group what they had written and drawn. I won't lie, I was more than somewhat surprised. The point of the session is to teach them an alternate pedagogy, as a tool to approach their experience as learners, not just participants. I had to explain to them that classrooms and textbooks and teachers are not their only avenues into education. And I think they appreciated knowing that they can be an expert, and can get a 'A', on the experiences that they can claim as learning moments.
I forget sometimes, that I went to good schools, that my education affirmed me, it empowered me. I forget that for some people, for a lot of people, education can do just the opposite. It can prove to them how little they know, and how often they fail. Formal education at least. I don't think I'd realised that before today, not really. I've read the literature, hells, I've even written a Masters Degree on knowledge and knowing and its intersections with identity. And I've sat in I don't know how many shitty classrooms, surrounded by shitty textbooks that treat children as idiots, not learners, but it's never really sunk in. I've always known that education does not equal intelligence, but being able to see something shift in the group today somehow made that nugget of knowledge more real.
"So Step one...?" I asked them.
"ACTION!" They shouted back. I laughed; I wasn't expecting such an enthusiastic response.
Ok, I thought, I'll play along. I wound my hand up like a baseball player about to pitch a ball and threw out a "and Step two?"
"REFLECTION!"
"STEP THREE?" I'm really into it now.
"LEARNING!"
"And what. the hell. is the point. of learning. without mo-o-o-o-o-re...?"
"ACTION!"
For a moment it's awesome. For a moment they forget that they're sitting there all cool and hooded up. For a moment they all applaud themselves. I guess it was in that moment, that action, that I learnt what I did today.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
A percent on paper
I stumbled, as one does, over the 2013 Annual National Assessment results for mathematics: 8,1% of Grade 9 learners passed mathematics with 30% and above. In contrast, 59.1% of last year's Grade 12's attained the same score. I was initially bemused, and wondered what miracle occurs between Grade 9 and Grade 12 to improve performance so dramatically. The first BOOM that hit me was the numbers of learners that must drop out. More Grade 12s pass mathematics because the ones who've stuck it out until then reflect only a subsection of the group that wrote in Grade 9, and that subsection is more able and more supported. The second BOOM that smacked the wind out of me, was the analysis that showed the failure rates of teachers: "Maths teachers were given five simple mathematical tasks from the Grade 6 curriculum... Two-thirds of teachers could answer only three questions, and just 12% could answer all five."*
You could get lost in the stats, and the regression analyses start to become just seas of numbers washing and waving through explanations of how all the pieces of the puzzle don't fit together. I left the seas and started to wonder what this all meant in terms of people's lived experiences. What does it mean in reality to not be able to work with numbers? I asked my mathematician brother, who explained that "trying to understand the world without understanding numbers is like trying to understand the world without being able to read. You're completely shutoff from some of the most important parts of society." He gave me examples of how trying to work out your household's electricity usage, or transport options, or groceries choices, is impossible if you don't have the tools and abilities to do so.
And then I remembered a conversation I had on my last visit to Kuwait in Site C, with a man who runs a business development consultancy. He helps contractors write-up quotes for the work that they do.
"We help them with pricing." He told me.
I assumed he meant that he researches what the market rates are and what the contractor needs to charge to be competitive, or what the changes are in costs of building materials and tools and where the cheapest places are to buy it all.
What he meant was, "they don't know how to make a quote and to add up a quote. They misquote. All the time, everytime."
"So they lose money?" I asked.
"No," he shook his head, "they don't lose money like you say they lose money. They don't get enough money."
I imagine them with businesses that stagnate, not grow, that cut even, only just.
"Shoh, they must really struggle then."
My naivety is rewarded with a very lived experience fact: "they struggle, but it's their workers who struggle more. They don't have money to pay their workers, so their workers don't get paid."
And there's the real BOOM. Failing mathematics in Grade 9 means that you might misquote. It means that you don't earn enough to grow your company. It means that you can't pay your workers. It means your workers don't have money. It means their families don't have food. That what a 91.9% failure rate means.
The numbers and graphs that decorate the pages of the DoE's website and Angie Motshekga's platitudes, they aren't just numbers and graphs. 91.9% of Grade 9 learners did not achieve 30% in mathematics. A clockwise curl, a line, a dot, a clockwise curl and two more symmetrical dots on either side of another skewed line. That's what 91.9% looks like on paper. That's not what it looks like in reality, not at all. Congratulations Angie, for the 8.1%. Well done.
*Charles Simkins, 2013. 'Performance in the South African Educational System: What do we know?' Centre for Development and Enterprise
You could get lost in the stats, and the regression analyses start to become just seas of numbers washing and waving through explanations of how all the pieces of the puzzle don't fit together. I left the seas and started to wonder what this all meant in terms of people's lived experiences. What does it mean in reality to not be able to work with numbers? I asked my mathematician brother, who explained that "trying to understand the world without understanding numbers is like trying to understand the world without being able to read. You're completely shutoff from some of the most important parts of society." He gave me examples of how trying to work out your household's electricity usage, or transport options, or groceries choices, is impossible if you don't have the tools and abilities to do so.
And then I remembered a conversation I had on my last visit to Kuwait in Site C, with a man who runs a business development consultancy. He helps contractors write-up quotes for the work that they do.
"We help them with pricing." He told me.
I assumed he meant that he researches what the market rates are and what the contractor needs to charge to be competitive, or what the changes are in costs of building materials and tools and where the cheapest places are to buy it all.
What he meant was, "they don't know how to make a quote and to add up a quote. They misquote. All the time, everytime."
"So they lose money?" I asked.
"No," he shook his head, "they don't lose money like you say they lose money. They don't get enough money."
I imagine them with businesses that stagnate, not grow, that cut even, only just.
"Shoh, they must really struggle then."
My naivety is rewarded with a very lived experience fact: "they struggle, but it's their workers who struggle more. They don't have money to pay their workers, so their workers don't get paid."
And there's the real BOOM. Failing mathematics in Grade 9 means that you might misquote. It means that you don't earn enough to grow your company. It means that you can't pay your workers. It means your workers don't have money. It means their families don't have food. That what a 91.9% failure rate means.
The numbers and graphs that decorate the pages of the DoE's website and Angie Motshekga's platitudes, they aren't just numbers and graphs. 91.9% of Grade 9 learners did not achieve 30% in mathematics. A clockwise curl, a line, a dot, a clockwise curl and two more symmetrical dots on either side of another skewed line. That's what 91.9% looks like on paper. That's not what it looks like in reality, not at all. Congratulations Angie, for the 8.1%. Well done.
*Charles Simkins, 2013. 'Performance in the South African Educational System: What do we know?' Centre for Development and Enterprise
Thursday, May 2, 2013
A kick by any other name
The classroom doubles as a storeroom. White cardboard boxes
from Al Ferdaws Food Industries stacked on bright green ones from Fruitways. A
Simba Chips box sits at the very bottom of the pile; so squashed it looks like
it’s melting into the floor. It was the period after break-time and we were in
the middle of a math game. The ten Grade 6’s in the remedial class competed
against each other, using their fingers as aids in their mental arithmetic. My
two students stood between them, calling out the simple sums that had the
learners’ fingers flicking up and down.
The school uniform is green here, the trim and occasional headscarf
grey. The chairs are orange as they always are in schools like this one and the
age of the desks is measured not in the concentric circles of the wood but in
the scribbles and scratches that cut through those circles.
A light knocking, almost invisible, and the door edges
forward. A teacher stands with three little bodies in front of her, and pushes
two of them forward.
“Sorry teachers for interrupting,” she tells us and turns to
the two little boys, “what are you here to say?”
They are young these two. They stand at the front of the
class and their heads hardly reach the bottom of the blotchy green chalkboard.
They stand right next to each other, their bodies separated only by static, and
the one starts to mumble quietly while the other stands with his hands in front
of him, looking a little uncertain.
“We are to say,” he starts in a small voice, a stumbling
voice, a voice that hardly fills his softly worn green tracksuit, a voice that
rushes out over us in its haste to be out and said and finished; “we are here
to say that we are looking for the boy who took his bottle”—he looks to his
friend—“and who kicked me on my face.” The boy with the missing bottle glances up
and then down again immediately. The boy who mumbled his explanation turns to
the teacher for guidance.
“Come! There are boys here.” Her voice is so clear and hard
and full in comparison. As her words bounce off the boxed walls of the room I
realize I’d been leaning forward to focus on the soft mumbles of the boy. I straighten up and back into my seat. She pulls
the two younger boys to the older boys sitting around the low tables closest to
the door and demands: “was it them?”
The younger ones look, the older ones smile innocence.
I can hardly hear the “no”.
“Then what do you say?” the teacher asks them.
“Thank you teachers,” the boy who speaks, speaks quietly, so
quietly. There is a mark above his right eye, a raised reddish patch. They
leave.
“Oh no!” I exclaim as they leave, I can’t help myself.
Everyone looks at me in my corner. “They’re just so small,” I defend my
outburst. The children laugh. But they were, so small. So sweetly pathetic.
Someone stole the silent one’s water bottle, someone kicked the other one on
his face.
My response was totally disproportional to the broader
context: we’re in Hanover Park, at a school that gets visited by the police
daily. When I saw the blue and white van and its flashing lights paused in the
staff parking lot, I asked if there was something going on today. The deputy principal assured me, no: “They come
every day. They have to sign to say that they’ve been,” she nibbles a bit on the
pink sugared popcorn that the lady who works in the kitchen made for the staff
today, “they check-up to see if there’s trouble at school or trouble at home.”
We’re in Hanover Park where rows of fences and rolls of
barbed wire mark entrances to public spaces.
“Stop kicking me!” complains one of the boys at the desk
across from mine.
“I’m not kicking you!” his neighbor replies. I can hear
there is shuffling from under the table. “You’re kicking me!”
“No it’s you, stop kicking me!” the first one repeats.
My student intervenes: “Have you both done the sums?”
“No Miss,” they say, and then settle down.
We’re in Hanover Park where children are children.
Some differences really are just aesthetic, I think to
myself. But then again I never saw the police at my school. I guess some
differences aren’t.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Plastic chairs
A few years ago, I was standing in a school quad looking at a furniture graveyard. The skeletal remains of desks and chairs were piled in what must have started as a stack but had grown into a jagged mound of educational debris. I can't remember the school, I can't remember why I was there, but the image of all the bended broken bits; I remember. I can also remember thinking that the discarded plastic chairs where so symbolic of the people and the system that broke them. Their graffitied orange seats would once have been clean and eager, they would have sat upright, prepared and full of potential. But now, at the end of the concrete quad, they're piled up anonymously with the inscriptions of the relatively powerful defining them far more so than their purpose.
I found myself sitting in a concrete quad last week, looking into the backs of some red plastic chairs. They were covered in black marker and shallow scratches, and were easing away from their metal structure at places, but they were still standing. I used to be bemused by the 'JFK' tag that is so ubiquitous in this part of Cape Town; why the fascination with Kennedy? Then I learnt about the Junky Funky Kids and my misguided assumptions were squashed by the contextual realities of Lavender Hill. So I'm sitting staring at JFK, at lists of names and one-liners, and I'm staring at the rows and rows of high school learners on the otherside of these chairs, sitting on the concrete with their hands up around their faces to shield them from the sun.
"It's not right that you come to write your exams the morning after your father gets shot," the principal is saying, "but that's our lives here and we need to work with it."
The learners nod, they understand. "So we try to make things work and we've got our turnaround strategy..." he continues.
It's hot. I put down my pen and phase out of focus. The women next to me are in visceral agreement with the principal, nodding, shaking, moving forwards and backwards in their seats. A little boy escapes his mother's hand as she raises them to clap at a statement she found particularly profound and he runs like toddlers do, aimlessly. I lose sight of him as he circles behind me but then here he is standing, staring up at me open-mouthed. I smile, "Hey kid." No response. No fear, no shyness, no engagement, just silence, absence. So I sit there staring at him as he stands staring at me.
"...and so we painted a wall of commitment and you have all committed to coming to school this year?"
The learners chorus "Yis," as though his doubt is unfounded. He nods, puts away his notes and sits down. As the woman in front of me joins in the vigorous applause, her chair wobbles preemptively. She stops clapping and holds on the metal legs to steady it. It steadies. Three of the four feet back on the ground, the last one hovering permanently above it. I'm transfixed as I watch that chair, it reminds me of something. Falling-not falling-falling-not falling-falling-not falling: yes, like DiCaprio's spinning top.
There is no shade in this quad, only sun and sweat and the soundless prayers of the mothers around me, echoing off the painted walls and into the seated swarm of chance.
I found myself sitting in a concrete quad last week, looking into the backs of some red plastic chairs. They were covered in black marker and shallow scratches, and were easing away from their metal structure at places, but they were still standing. I used to be bemused by the 'JFK' tag that is so ubiquitous in this part of Cape Town; why the fascination with Kennedy? Then I learnt about the Junky Funky Kids and my misguided assumptions were squashed by the contextual realities of Lavender Hill. So I'm sitting staring at JFK, at lists of names and one-liners, and I'm staring at the rows and rows of high school learners on the otherside of these chairs, sitting on the concrete with their hands up around their faces to shield them from the sun.
"It's not right that you come to write your exams the morning after your father gets shot," the principal is saying, "but that's our lives here and we need to work with it."
The learners nod, they understand. "So we try to make things work and we've got our turnaround strategy..." he continues.
It's hot. I put down my pen and phase out of focus. The women next to me are in visceral agreement with the principal, nodding, shaking, moving forwards and backwards in their seats. A little boy escapes his mother's hand as she raises them to clap at a statement she found particularly profound and he runs like toddlers do, aimlessly. I lose sight of him as he circles behind me but then here he is standing, staring up at me open-mouthed. I smile, "Hey kid." No response. No fear, no shyness, no engagement, just silence, absence. So I sit there staring at him as he stands staring at me.
"...and so we painted a wall of commitment and you have all committed to coming to school this year?"
The learners chorus "Yis," as though his doubt is unfounded. He nods, puts away his notes and sits down. As the woman in front of me joins in the vigorous applause, her chair wobbles preemptively. She stops clapping and holds on the metal legs to steady it. It steadies. Three of the four feet back on the ground, the last one hovering permanently above it. I'm transfixed as I watch that chair, it reminds me of something. Falling-not falling-falling-not falling-falling-not falling: yes, like DiCaprio's spinning top.
There is no shade in this quad, only sun and sweat and the soundless prayers of the mothers around me, echoing off the painted walls and into the seated swarm of chance.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Up North
I've been in Mozambique the last couple of days, just on holiday with a few friends. We drove up to Ponta from Durban, and there on the stretch of road after Hluhluwe in rural KwaZulu Natal, my road rage shifted from its usual tingle to a full-blown fireworks display. It wasn't the cars, no-no, it was the speed bumps. One set after another. It was 6:30am, we'd been driving since 3am and I was exhausted, so kilometres of speed bumps: close to the last thing I wanted to experience at that moment in my life. I was about to explode out of my head, and then, we started seeing the kids. Neatly uniformed little people, walking down the road in bundles of two and three. Over the course of an hour, we must have driven past hundreds of kids in their bright school uniforms, most without schools bags; an unnecessary expense I suppose.
"Shoh, it's early though."
"Ya, I wonder where they're walking from."
Bottles and I can do the math: if school starts at 8am, maybe 7:30am, these kids are spending at least an hour walking to school.
We drive past some of the schools. We know that they're schools because they have signs outside, the school name above the Coca-Cola logo. There's a lot of sand, not so many windows. Not so many cars either, even after 7:30, when you'd expect the teachers to be at school. Another friend, sitting in the backseat, articulates what we're all thinking: "Why do the kids even bother going?"
Rural KZN. We drive past the "Big Farmer" kiosk, cement bricks.
"What else is there to do?" I reply.
Ponta is also rural. Rural and poor. We went out to a bar called Fernando's, got into a conversation with some guys from Pretoria. The one boytch told me that "us" Afrikaners need to stand together to protect the Boer culture. That's nice, white supremacy is alive and well there on the other side of my Raspberry and Rum. I didn't know where to start, so I just stopped talking to him. I forget, very often, that the bubble in which I live--where big words like equality, freedom, human dignity and the rest of the constitutional Brady Bunch, are you know, just assumed--is just that: a bubble.
Other than its visitors, Ponta is great. Postcard beaches, warm water, tropical ambience and kickass peri-peri and prego chicken according to Bottles.
Yesterday was back to work. My friend, a primary school teacher in Soweto, messaged last night to say that not one of her Grade 6 students passed their ANAs (Annual National Assessments). Miss Jay, as her kids call her, feels less than inspired. So do I to be honest. And I'm an annoyingly optimistic idealist most of the time.
Holiday: it's meant to be good for the soul right?
"Shoh, it's early though."
"Ya, I wonder where they're walking from."
Bottles and I can do the math: if school starts at 8am, maybe 7:30am, these kids are spending at least an hour walking to school.
We drive past some of the schools. We know that they're schools because they have signs outside, the school name above the Coca-Cola logo. There's a lot of sand, not so many windows. Not so many cars either, even after 7:30, when you'd expect the teachers to be at school. Another friend, sitting in the backseat, articulates what we're all thinking: "Why do the kids even bother going?"
Rural KZN. We drive past the "Big Farmer" kiosk, cement bricks.
"What else is there to do?" I reply.
Ponta is also rural. Rural and poor. We went out to a bar called Fernando's, got into a conversation with some guys from Pretoria. The one boytch told me that "us" Afrikaners need to stand together to protect the Boer culture. That's nice, white supremacy is alive and well there on the other side of my Raspberry and Rum. I didn't know where to start, so I just stopped talking to him. I forget, very often, that the bubble in which I live--where big words like equality, freedom, human dignity and the rest of the constitutional Brady Bunch, are you know, just assumed--is just that: a bubble.
Other than its visitors, Ponta is great. Postcard beaches, warm water, tropical ambience and kickass peri-peri and prego chicken according to Bottles.
Yesterday was back to work. My friend, a primary school teacher in Soweto, messaged last night to say that not one of her Grade 6 students passed their ANAs (Annual National Assessments). Miss Jay, as her kids call her, feels less than inspired. So do I to be honest. And I'm an annoyingly optimistic idealist most of the time.
Holiday: it's meant to be good for the soul right?
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Playing fields
The chairperson of the Lavender Hill Development Trust showed me an aerial map last week. She pointed out a dilapidated structure on the boundary of Lavender Hill High. "They call it the pink house," she tells me.
"What happens there?" I ask.
She offers a short laugh. "No one really knows. All we know is that there was a separate entrance," she points to what looks like a gap in the school fence, "and people on foot and in cars would go to house, stay a while, and leave."
Now that the sports fields have been built, and a new fence constructed, access to the pink house is somewhat limited. Now you have to come at it from the east, from the side of the informal settlement, not the M5.
The Development Trust was set up to manage a sustainability fund for the management of the sports fields. "Why aren't the sports fields the school's problem?" you may wonder...
Couple of years back, the infamous Bottles and I were doing an internship with an urban development organization based in Khayelitsha. One of the activities with which I was tasked, was to increase the learners' interest in the sports fields that had recently been built on their school grounds. See, there were three schools in the area for whom these fields were built. Now, all that these three schools needed to do was to sit down and work out a schedule: who was going to use the sports fields on what afternoons for what sports. Months after the fields had been built, the schools hadn't got this right, and the organization hadn't handed over management of the fields. The idea was that if more learners had greater interest in the fields, and knew how to "participate" in the process of using them, the schools would feel the pressure to get their poultry aligned, and, quite simply, to sort their shit out.
And so, two years later, I'm sitting in the HQ/lounge of the Lavender Hill Development Trust drinking tea and joining the lament of the chairwoman.
The sports fields are not the school's problem, because, well, in many cases, the school is the problem. Not the whole school, no-no, and therein lies problem number one: often, schools do not work as one unit. Therefore, problem number two: management of resources like sports fields becomes a political activity. Which leads us to problem number three: between the internal politicking and the external politicking, the doing very often does not get done.
"Another cup of tea?" she offers.
"Ah, I've got to get back to the office." I tell her.
I drive back down the M5, past the primary school on the corner, there are a couple of kids milling around at the fenced entrance. I hope it's break time.
"What happens there?" I ask.
She offers a short laugh. "No one really knows. All we know is that there was a separate entrance," she points to what looks like a gap in the school fence, "and people on foot and in cars would go to house, stay a while, and leave."
Now that the sports fields have been built, and a new fence constructed, access to the pink house is somewhat limited. Now you have to come at it from the east, from the side of the informal settlement, not the M5.
The Development Trust was set up to manage a sustainability fund for the management of the sports fields. "Why aren't the sports fields the school's problem?" you may wonder...
Couple of years back, the infamous Bottles and I were doing an internship with an urban development organization based in Khayelitsha. One of the activities with which I was tasked, was to increase the learners' interest in the sports fields that had recently been built on their school grounds. See, there were three schools in the area for whom these fields were built. Now, all that these three schools needed to do was to sit down and work out a schedule: who was going to use the sports fields on what afternoons for what sports. Months after the fields had been built, the schools hadn't got this right, and the organization hadn't handed over management of the fields. The idea was that if more learners had greater interest in the fields, and knew how to "participate" in the process of using them, the schools would feel the pressure to get their poultry aligned, and, quite simply, to sort their shit out.
And so, two years later, I'm sitting in the HQ/lounge of the Lavender Hill Development Trust drinking tea and joining the lament of the chairwoman.
The sports fields are not the school's problem, because, well, in many cases, the school is the problem. Not the whole school, no-no, and therein lies problem number one: often, schools do not work as one unit. Therefore, problem number two: management of resources like sports fields becomes a political activity. Which leads us to problem number three: between the internal politicking and the external politicking, the doing very often does not get done.
"Another cup of tea?" she offers.
"Ah, I've got to get back to the office." I tell her.
I drive back down the M5, past the primary school on the corner, there are a couple of kids milling around at the fenced entrance. I hope it's break time.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Between mud and bullets
On the Capricorn side of Lavender Hill there's an informal settlement. It was about 2004 when people started moving here. I asked two women who lived nearby where the new residents came from, they told me "all over. But mostly from backyards." There is one broad drive into the settlement, broader than most Cape Town southern suburbs roads and much, much broader than the tracks I used to squeeze my car through in RR-Section. Thing is, this sweeping drive is mud. I suppose in the summer it's sandy gravel, but these days, it's a thick dark chocolate mud. The wide muddy entry, matched with the tinned and wooden structures, makes the area look like my imagining of a turn of the previous century mining village. The area is called 'Overcome'.
Lavender Hill has been in the news recently, the gang violence in the courts has escalated to something resembling a war, which is why the premier's office is calling for the army to be deployed. One of my students is doing research in Lavender Hill, trying to find a meaningful link between school drop-out rates and, well, anything really. He asked the kids he's interviewing for the research what makes them feel safe. The answer was unanimous; the army. But, there are issues with just bringing in the defense force, for a start, it generally doesn't stop the gang activity, it just displaces the killing to another area.
Another student, who's gone back home now, was working with some primary school kids on setting up a school garden. She was talking to our class about these kids, and started with the analogy of a seed. A seed needs water, air, nutrients and such in order to grow and to flourish. Arguably, kids needs something similar. But not really see, and she threw out the analogy. Somehow, despite not having a particularly nurturing environment, the kids here grow. Between mud and bullets, they grow. She made a forceful point with fiery eyes, and told us all that whenever we spoke about Lavender Hill, about the malaise that haunts it, that we mention the kids who grow here.
So on Wednesday, as I drove with my visitors through that section of Lansdowne Road that gets flooded when it rains and the sewerage streams over the road like a swarm of locusts desiccating everthing in its path, and then later when we arrived in Lavender Hill, I told the skeptical faces around me that people don't just survive under these conditions, they flourish.
Despondency doesn't breed change, it breeds discontent, so it's probably worth being hopeful.
Lavender Hill has been in the news recently, the gang violence in the courts has escalated to something resembling a war, which is why the premier's office is calling for the army to be deployed. One of my students is doing research in Lavender Hill, trying to find a meaningful link between school drop-out rates and, well, anything really. He asked the kids he's interviewing for the research what makes them feel safe. The answer was unanimous; the army. But, there are issues with just bringing in the defense force, for a start, it generally doesn't stop the gang activity, it just displaces the killing to another area.
Another student, who's gone back home now, was working with some primary school kids on setting up a school garden. She was talking to our class about these kids, and started with the analogy of a seed. A seed needs water, air, nutrients and such in order to grow and to flourish. Arguably, kids needs something similar. But not really see, and she threw out the analogy. Somehow, despite not having a particularly nurturing environment, the kids here grow. Between mud and bullets, they grow. She made a forceful point with fiery eyes, and told us all that whenever we spoke about Lavender Hill, about the malaise that haunts it, that we mention the kids who grow here.
So on Wednesday, as I drove with my visitors through that section of Lansdowne Road that gets flooded when it rains and the sewerage streams over the road like a swarm of locusts desiccating everthing in its path, and then later when we arrived in Lavender Hill, I told the skeptical faces around me that people don't just survive under these conditions, they flourish.
Despondency doesn't breed change, it breeds discontent, so it's probably worth being hopeful.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
A school in the city
I'm waiting in the principal's office. We're chatting about the school, about the holidays next week. He marks exam-scripts as we talk. I notice that there is a small queue forming at his door. Jostling little green tracksuits waiting to see him. "Oh," I realize that they're not coming in on my account, so I wave them over. Their queue moves from the doorway to the principal and the first little girl puts a one rand on the desk. The principal slides it over to the tin just to the left of his calendar and gives her an expectant look. "Blue pen." She says. He reaches for the container of blue pens on the tea-tray next to his phone and hands it to her. The next student is up. "Uitvee" he says as he passes his coins to the principal. The principal passes him an eraser from the little blue-lidded tupperware next to the pens. The ritual continues until all the students have completed their transactions.
"It's most busy on a Monday and Friday morning," the principal answers my unasked questions, "that's when they have money." He smiles. "We don't do it for profit you know, we just sell at the cost price but at least then they can have stationery in the class."
I think back to all the classrooms I've sat in and observed the last few years, to all the shouts for stationery that disrupt learning. I nod emphatically, "ya, it's a good plan!"
"And it teaches them to save you know," he goes on. "Like these two rulers," he holds up a plain red one, and a broader blue one that has an ABC stencil in the middle, "the blue is more expensive, but all the kids what it. So I tell them, don't buy the red one, rather save your money for a few days and then come and buy the blue one." He smiles again. "And they do!"
I smile back. I'm liking this school already, and it's only my first meeting.
I sit with the deputy and drink tea for an hour, and we discuss what my students could do at the school, how they could slot into the existing programmes. She tells me about the problems in the community, and I'm no longer really surprised by much that I hear, about kids in the BBK's (Billabong Kids), or the Mongrels. But when the HoD of foundation phase pops her head in asking for the number of the inspector who came to speak to the Grade 6s last week, I'm taken aback a little bit.
"Ye-es," she tells me, "the young ones are also getting involved now."
"How do you mean?" I ask her. She offers me an animated response, as though thriving off my disbelief.
"There's a boy in Grade 7 who's like the boss see. And then he is now recruiting some of the younger kids to join him. So we took all the boys out of class this morning, and we asked them what is going on. Then they were telling us about all the other gangs that are recruiting, and who is involved with which gang. We did a bag search and found some screwdrivers and scissors, so we took those away and now we must call in the parents." She shakes her head. The deputy tells her where to find Inspector Allie's number.
"It's difficult," she sighs. "Everytime the violence flares up, then the kids get involved. It's their brothers and uncles and fathers."
We chat a little longer, and I go in to greet the principal on my way out. He looks worried. "We've just had a phonecall he says," he doesn't finish the thought. "Which way are you leaving?"
I point to the direction that I came in from.
"Good," he responds. "You just go right at the gate and keep going out that way. The other side has got a bit active." I suspect 'active' is euphemistic for something gang-related.
The deputy looks nervously at me. "Don't leave the Main Roads," she warns, the subtext of which is easily understood: don't get lost or you're going to find trouble.
"I'll be fine," I reassure her smiling. It really is, I have the directional-sense of a homing pigeon.
The principal seems placated. "Last night I was reading in the papers and there were two stories about Hanover Park, but it's just where we are, we live here, we are here everyday."
"Ya," I agree, "exactly."
I drive onto the speed-bumped road outside the school, the mountain in the distance. There is a blotchy grey-white donkey negotiating it's way through the narrow buildings to my left and out onto the street. Cape Town is a donkey-cart, a man with an amber quartz bottle--there waving to a group of guys huddled on either side of a low fibre-crete fence. Cape Town is a woman in bright pink pajama pants, sitting on the pavement texting. It's the Olympic Cafe and the terracotta coloured butchery on the corner.
Really: it, the city, is as much Hanover Park as it is the V&A.
"It's most busy on a Monday and Friday morning," the principal answers my unasked questions, "that's when they have money." He smiles. "We don't do it for profit you know, we just sell at the cost price but at least then they can have stationery in the class."
I think back to all the classrooms I've sat in and observed the last few years, to all the shouts for stationery that disrupt learning. I nod emphatically, "ya, it's a good plan!"
"And it teaches them to save you know," he goes on. "Like these two rulers," he holds up a plain red one, and a broader blue one that has an ABC stencil in the middle, "the blue is more expensive, but all the kids what it. So I tell them, don't buy the red one, rather save your money for a few days and then come and buy the blue one." He smiles again. "And they do!"
I smile back. I'm liking this school already, and it's only my first meeting.
I sit with the deputy and drink tea for an hour, and we discuss what my students could do at the school, how they could slot into the existing programmes. She tells me about the problems in the community, and I'm no longer really surprised by much that I hear, about kids in the BBK's (Billabong Kids), or the Mongrels. But when the HoD of foundation phase pops her head in asking for the number of the inspector who came to speak to the Grade 6s last week, I'm taken aback a little bit.
"Ye-es," she tells me, "the young ones are also getting involved now."
"How do you mean?" I ask her. She offers me an animated response, as though thriving off my disbelief.
"There's a boy in Grade 7 who's like the boss see. And then he is now recruiting some of the younger kids to join him. So we took all the boys out of class this morning, and we asked them what is going on. Then they were telling us about all the other gangs that are recruiting, and who is involved with which gang. We did a bag search and found some screwdrivers and scissors, so we took those away and now we must call in the parents." She shakes her head. The deputy tells her where to find Inspector Allie's number.
"It's difficult," she sighs. "Everytime the violence flares up, then the kids get involved. It's their brothers and uncles and fathers."
We chat a little longer, and I go in to greet the principal on my way out. He looks worried. "We've just had a phonecall he says," he doesn't finish the thought. "Which way are you leaving?"
I point to the direction that I came in from.
"Good," he responds. "You just go right at the gate and keep going out that way. The other side has got a bit active." I suspect 'active' is euphemistic for something gang-related.
The deputy looks nervously at me. "Don't leave the Main Roads," she warns, the subtext of which is easily understood: don't get lost or you're going to find trouble.
"I'll be fine," I reassure her smiling. It really is, I have the directional-sense of a homing pigeon.
The principal seems placated. "Last night I was reading in the papers and there were two stories about Hanover Park, but it's just where we are, we live here, we are here everyday."
"Ya," I agree, "exactly."
I drive onto the speed-bumped road outside the school, the mountain in the distance. There is a blotchy grey-white donkey negotiating it's way through the narrow buildings to my left and out onto the street. Cape Town is a donkey-cart, a man with an amber quartz bottle--there waving to a group of guys huddled on either side of a low fibre-crete fence. Cape Town is a woman in bright pink pajama pants, sitting on the pavement texting. It's the Olympic Cafe and the terracotta coloured butchery on the corner.
Really: it, the city, is as much Hanover Park as it is the V&A.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Improving Schools
I went to the launch of UCT's Schools Improvement Initiative yesterday afternoon. Took a bunch of my students, jumped into our little bus and made our way to Ilitha Park. The launch was at COSAT School (all architecturally designed with green grounds and grass), and combined with the red roofs and front gardens of Ilitha Park, it looks almost middle-class as my one student pointed out. You could almost forget you're in Cape Town's biggest township. The launch itself, well, it was a launch. Flowers on stage and chicken-wings on the refreshment table. A choral interlude, a powerpoint, and speeches from politicians who observed protocol. I was impressed at the time, taken in by the concise presentations and choreographed singing, but now I realize I'm not as psyched as I thought I was.
The SII is, unsurprisingly, an intervention aimed at improving schools. It's not that it isn't a necessary, relevant, important intervention, it's just that in the sober reflection of an average Tuesday afternoon, the launch last night didn't show me how it is all that different from other necessary, relevant and important interventions. Khayelitsha is home to a barraging multitude of interventions like these, and the launch didn't leave me with the sense that this one is different. This one, yes, this one, is going to work. It's going to change things. It's going to be the intervention version of Obama's Hope poster.
Maybe I'm a cynic. Maybe working at the intersection of university and community has furnished me with jade-coloured glasses. Maybe the SII will be different, I really hope it will... In the meantime, I'll just nibble on the yoghurt-covered cranberries I found in my trail mix and try to remember and hold onto that initial spark of excitement I felt last night when the programme director welcomed us all.
The SII is, unsurprisingly, an intervention aimed at improving schools. It's not that it isn't a necessary, relevant, important intervention, it's just that in the sober reflection of an average Tuesday afternoon, the launch last night didn't show me how it is all that different from other necessary, relevant and important interventions. Khayelitsha is home to a barraging multitude of interventions like these, and the launch didn't leave me with the sense that this one is different. This one, yes, this one, is going to work. It's going to change things. It's going to be the intervention version of Obama's Hope poster.
Maybe I'm a cynic. Maybe working at the intersection of university and community has furnished me with jade-coloured glasses. Maybe the SII will be different, I really hope it will... In the meantime, I'll just nibble on the yoghurt-covered cranberries I found in my trail mix and try to remember and hold onto that initial spark of excitement I felt last night when the programme director welcomed us all.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Adult Education
Tabby writes her Adult Education exam on Friday. She's been studying furiously the last few weeks, she really wants to do well. "I've never failed anything," she told me over tea, "I don't want to fail this." But she's struggling a little, after she was put in the wrong class and covered the wrong material for half the term before the teacher realized her mistake and moved her to where she should be. A glitch in the university's registration system and suddenly it's even harder for Tabby to learn. It would be ironic if it wasn't so frustrating.
The manager at EWC isn't making things easier; refusing to give Tabita time off work to study. But Tabby has balls the size of Russia, and is mitigating the situation as best she can. When I visited a week ago, Tabby gave me her books to sit with in the kitchen, pretending they were my own. She stood a few steps to the right peeling carrots, or rather peeling one carrot repeatedly, while I read out her notes slowly, repeating the lines, each line, and she listened. Between us Ma'Monica's soup bubbled, behind us Yandi cleaned the sink. The manager walked in and out. She tolerates me because she has to; my presence at the site precedes hers and was negotiated by a former manager and she can't tell me to leave. I smile as I answer her questioning gaze, "I'm just doing some reading." Tabby refocuses on her carrot and peels furiously.
On my visit last Friday, Tabby passed me a note as I sat warming and humming next to the heater in the office: please go to the kitchen we will discuss this further. Take the book with.
So I took the note, scrabbled around on her big desk to find her book, grabbed some other papers to cover it up, and made my way to the kitchen. I would have whistled and swaggered nonchalantly if I could have pulled it off. She joined me a few minutes later and we stood at the food-preparation table. Sitting would imply that we were spending time in the kitchen, standing means that she caught me in passing as I paged through the thick manual.
"So the question is about how you learn. About how it's a cognitive and social process." I tell her.
"Ok," she says, "so I discuss what needs to happen in my mind and then also around me?"
"Yeah, and you need to give examples." I read off the rest of the instruction.
She pauses for a few seconds, "Where must I find the examples?"
I start laughing, standing there in the kitchen with "my" books, hiding from her manager. "Tabs, I think you can start finding them here..."
The manager at EWC isn't making things easier; refusing to give Tabita time off work to study. But Tabby has balls the size of Russia, and is mitigating the situation as best she can. When I visited a week ago, Tabby gave me her books to sit with in the kitchen, pretending they were my own. She stood a few steps to the right peeling carrots, or rather peeling one carrot repeatedly, while I read out her notes slowly, repeating the lines, each line, and she listened. Between us Ma'Monica's soup bubbled, behind us Yandi cleaned the sink. The manager walked in and out. She tolerates me because she has to; my presence at the site precedes hers and was negotiated by a former manager and she can't tell me to leave. I smile as I answer her questioning gaze, "I'm just doing some reading." Tabby refocuses on her carrot and peels furiously.
On my visit last Friday, Tabby passed me a note as I sat warming and humming next to the heater in the office: please go to the kitchen we will discuss this further. Take the book with.
So I took the note, scrabbled around on her big desk to find her book, grabbed some other papers to cover it up, and made my way to the kitchen. I would have whistled and swaggered nonchalantly if I could have pulled it off. She joined me a few minutes later and we stood at the food-preparation table. Sitting would imply that we were spending time in the kitchen, standing means that she caught me in passing as I paged through the thick manual.
"So the question is about how you learn. About how it's a cognitive and social process." I tell her.
"Ok," she says, "so I discuss what needs to happen in my mind and then also around me?"
"Yeah, and you need to give examples." I read off the rest of the instruction.
She pauses for a few seconds, "Where must I find the examples?"
I start laughing, standing there in the kitchen with "my" books, hiding from her manager. "Tabs, I think you can start finding them here..."
Thursday, May 24, 2012
"We grow them small here."
I ended the day by taking a photo of my students sitting on the pavement while we waited for our transport to pick us up. I was tempted to go to sleep right there, in between the taxis that dropped the sports teams off at the cross-country race. It was a long day, filled with small children. I don't trust small children; they move too fast. One moment they're standing in a straight row, the next they're in a pile-up. The transition so quick and smooth, it's like their little bodies are centred around powerful magnets that snap close to each other when activated. It doesn't help that here in Mitchells Plain, "we grow them small," as my students were told when they arrived at the school.
I thought that the morning's dance classes were going to be the messiest thing I saw that day. The smallest class had 35 learners. On a constant sugar high from the crappy sweets they buy at the tuckshop, they bounce constantly. While my student tried to teach some Grade 3s basic hip-hop moves, some boys at the back of the class did their own dance.
"It's the chicken dance," the one boy giggled, "the Chicken Licken dance!" His friends laughed and chicken-lickened with flapping arms and pecking heads for a bit before they lost interest and climbed underneath the semi-standing ping-pong table.
The school doesn't have a sports coordinator. There are volunteers, like my dance student, who run the physical education and life orientation classes. But,
"What happens on the days you aren't here?" I asked my student.
"The kids sit in their classes."
"And do what?"
"Well, the teachers go to the teachers' lounge because it's a free period for them, so the kids just sit."
"They sit?"
"Yeah."
They sit and make a noise, disrupting the classes around them. The teachers from neighbouring classrooms have to leave their own classes, come and shout at them for a while, go back, and try to teach with 35 children doing whatever the hell they want in the room next door.
Off to my other student's English class for the longest hour and a half of my week. It was as though the learners would get a small electrical jolt everytime they sat still for longer than half a minute. Turning around, sideways, in a few instances underneath their desk and upside down when looking for an eraser on the floor. The teacher who was meant to be here had to go and set up the cross-country track. If we hadn't been there his students would have sat unsupervised, replicating the problem above. Not that our presence seemed to encourage productivity.
It's 2.15pm and the school day is over. I'm ready to collapse. But it's off to cross-country we go. I'm in the school bus with the learners. The teachers are discussing whether getting a whistle and blowing it periodically to get the kids to sit down would be at all effective. As we reach the traffic lights at the corner of Spine and Eisleben, the intersection that advertizes itself as "Snoek Point", a police van rolls up to our left. A chorus of shouts goes up from the learners: "Dissie boere, dissie boere*! Sit still!" I laugh out loud, it's all too absurd. But the kids are momentarily calmed.
Our role at the cross-country venue is to separate the finishing runners into the "girls" and "boys" channels, and to keep them in the order in which they finished. The finish line is at the bottom of a hill, and there is no efficient way of noting down the names of finishers, so a queue of runners waiting to have their names recorded starts to wind its way up the gravelly slope. Runners run past the end of the line, have to be hauled back up to the top of the slope, some can't slow down in time so crash into the back of the line and push five or six learners over who rapidly reshuffle their places. I can shout with a volume comparable to a foghorn, so was positioned at the stop of the hill to scream directions to the jostling runners. It was like I was an orchestral conductor, standing on a tiny rock in the middle of an oncoming tidal wave, trying wave each droplet of water into the direction they should go.
I sat at my kitchen table last night after dinner, put my head on the wood and fell asleep for a while.
* It's the police! Technically, "it's the farmers!", a throw-back to the days of white Afrikaans policemen.
I thought that the morning's dance classes were going to be the messiest thing I saw that day. The smallest class had 35 learners. On a constant sugar high from the crappy sweets they buy at the tuckshop, they bounce constantly. While my student tried to teach some Grade 3s basic hip-hop moves, some boys at the back of the class did their own dance.
"It's the chicken dance," the one boy giggled, "the Chicken Licken dance!" His friends laughed and chicken-lickened with flapping arms and pecking heads for a bit before they lost interest and climbed underneath the semi-standing ping-pong table.
The school doesn't have a sports coordinator. There are volunteers, like my dance student, who run the physical education and life orientation classes. But,
"What happens on the days you aren't here?" I asked my student.
"The kids sit in their classes."
"And do what?"
"Well, the teachers go to the teachers' lounge because it's a free period for them, so the kids just sit."
"They sit?"
"Yeah."
They sit and make a noise, disrupting the classes around them. The teachers from neighbouring classrooms have to leave their own classes, come and shout at them for a while, go back, and try to teach with 35 children doing whatever the hell they want in the room next door.
Off to my other student's English class for the longest hour and a half of my week. It was as though the learners would get a small electrical jolt everytime they sat still for longer than half a minute. Turning around, sideways, in a few instances underneath their desk and upside down when looking for an eraser on the floor. The teacher who was meant to be here had to go and set up the cross-country track. If we hadn't been there his students would have sat unsupervised, replicating the problem above. Not that our presence seemed to encourage productivity.
It's 2.15pm and the school day is over. I'm ready to collapse. But it's off to cross-country we go. I'm in the school bus with the learners. The teachers are discussing whether getting a whistle and blowing it periodically to get the kids to sit down would be at all effective. As we reach the traffic lights at the corner of Spine and Eisleben, the intersection that advertizes itself as "Snoek Point", a police van rolls up to our left. A chorus of shouts goes up from the learners: "Dissie boere, dissie boere*! Sit still!" I laugh out loud, it's all too absurd. But the kids are momentarily calmed.
Our role at the cross-country venue is to separate the finishing runners into the "girls" and "boys" channels, and to keep them in the order in which they finished. The finish line is at the bottom of a hill, and there is no efficient way of noting down the names of finishers, so a queue of runners waiting to have their names recorded starts to wind its way up the gravelly slope. Runners run past the end of the line, have to be hauled back up to the top of the slope, some can't slow down in time so crash into the back of the line and push five or six learners over who rapidly reshuffle their places. I can shout with a volume comparable to a foghorn, so was positioned at the stop of the hill to scream directions to the jostling runners. It was like I was an orchestral conductor, standing on a tiny rock in the middle of an oncoming tidal wave, trying wave each droplet of water into the direction they should go.
I sat at my kitchen table last night after dinner, put my head on the wood and fell asleep for a while.
* It's the police! Technically, "it's the farmers!", a throw-back to the days of white Afrikaans policemen.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Watching the Plot
It's misleading, "Lavender Hill". Conjures up visions of slow-motion swaying Lavender bushes, a gentle slope. Creme brulee sunshine.
"The school's the safest place here," one of the teachers explained, as we watched parents come to collect their children, "so these parents are silly to take their children out of school and back to the courts." The school faces an open field, known as the battleground, surrounded by courts and quads of three-storey flats with washing lines swung between the buildings, the laundry moving breezily as though totally oblivious to the action below. When gang violence flares up, as it does every few days, parents come to collect their children and take them home.
We stood in a line against the wall outside the library, looking over the teachers' parking area to the police cars circling the grassy patch. We'd heard gunshots about an hour or so ago, but the scene was recalibrating as the couple with their trolley of chips and sweets rolled their wares back out onto their patch opposite the school gate. The same teacher turned to my student who volunteers here and told her that it was now safe to collect the children from their classes and take them outside. Outside to the sandy shady patch behind the water tank to inspect how their seedlings were progressing in their polystyrene trays. She gave the row of us one more shake of her head before walking back to her own class.
I stayed in my spot, leaning against the wall with some guys from the Department of Culture and Sports, so casually, like we were having a smoke and talking shit. Parents walked by, with their kids and their rapidly packed backpacks. My new friends run some dance and sports programmes here and "when I drive here in the mornings," the guy in the black jacket tells me, "man I just fly over those speed bumps! No ways am I slowing down past the field." His colleague nodded and agreed. "Ya evens if there is a dog in the road, or something so, you can't slow down. Ya if you slow down there'll be trouble." I nod. As though I understand.
It's getting hot here now. I turn and squint over the top of the school buildings, finding the source. Winter sunshine, nothing like it.
"The school's the safest place here," one of the teachers explained, as we watched parents come to collect their children, "so these parents are silly to take their children out of school and back to the courts." The school faces an open field, known as the battleground, surrounded by courts and quads of three-storey flats with washing lines swung between the buildings, the laundry moving breezily as though totally oblivious to the action below. When gang violence flares up, as it does every few days, parents come to collect their children and take them home.
We stood in a line against the wall outside the library, looking over the teachers' parking area to the police cars circling the grassy patch. We'd heard gunshots about an hour or so ago, but the scene was recalibrating as the couple with their trolley of chips and sweets rolled their wares back out onto their patch opposite the school gate. The same teacher turned to my student who volunteers here and told her that it was now safe to collect the children from their classes and take them outside. Outside to the sandy shady patch behind the water tank to inspect how their seedlings were progressing in their polystyrene trays. She gave the row of us one more shake of her head before walking back to her own class.
I stayed in my spot, leaning against the wall with some guys from the Department of Culture and Sports, so casually, like we were having a smoke and talking shit. Parents walked by, with their kids and their rapidly packed backpacks. My new friends run some dance and sports programmes here and "when I drive here in the mornings," the guy in the black jacket tells me, "man I just fly over those speed bumps! No ways am I slowing down past the field." His colleague nodded and agreed. "Ya evens if there is a dog in the road, or something so, you can't slow down. Ya if you slow down there'll be trouble." I nod. As though I understand.
It's getting hot here now. I turn and squint over the top of the school buildings, finding the source. Winter sunshine, nothing like it.
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