The dismal failure of outcomes-based education proves the inherent flaw in lowering standards to meet pupils – or anyone else, for that matter – rather than raising pupils to meet higher and better standards.
Here is a good joke for you. Knock, knock. Who’s there? The South African education system! Now that is one hell of a joke. But if it doesn’t have you rolling on the floor in stitches then, like me, you have had a serious sense of humour failure with the department of education and its epic failure where educating the children of South Africa is concerned.
This week minister of basic education Angie Motshekga announced that the ever-controversial outcomes-based education system would be reviewed and amended to bring about better matric results. She said, "We have (made) and will continue to make changes on an on-going basis...we expect better outcomes from the system". How can the government still be reviewing and modifying a system 12 years down the line? Either it works or it doesn’t. And the stats show it doesn’t. From where I stand, this is a classic case of “We don’t know what the hell we are doing so we are going to fumble our way through it as we have always done”.
Motshekga went on to admit the curriculum has major problems. If that’s the case, why is the government so determined to keep on implementing it? The fact that it was implemented at all is a glaring show of the lack of logic prevailing in Pretoria. OBE was tossed aside by Canada, New Zealand, UK and the Netherlands after they tried it and it failed. Countries with better education infrastructure and resources came to the conclusion that this method of teaching was not producing results and scrapped it - only for us to take it on and for it to fail dismally!
The consistent drop in percentages in the pass rate would have alarmed any ministry, forced it to admit failure and to return to the drawing board. But not South Africa. For those who are unaware of it, this is how it has been working out for our matrics:
- 2003: 73.3 % pass rate
- 2004: 70.7 % pass rate
- 2005: 68.3 % pass rate
- 2006: 66.5 % pass rate
- 2007: 65.2 % pass rate
- 2008: 62.7 % pass rate
- 2009: 60.6 % pass rate
This shows a steady decline, despite the fact that standards have been lowered over the years. This problem apparently gave previous minister Naledi Pandor, and Motshekga a couple of sleepless nights. But while they tossed and turned in their beds, the youth of the country went uneducated. Some bright spark even decided the way to solve this problem would be to reduce the pass rate. Yes, it made sense to dumb-down the system. As it stands, to get a matric certificate in South Africa, candidates need pass only six subjects - three with a minimum mark of 30% and three with a minimum of 40% and the mediocre score of 70% gets you a distinction.
Since when does one bring the standard down to the children? We should be a society that constantly strives to bring our children up to an unwavering standard that does not shift or change depending on their performance. Compared to other countries where a distinction is nothing below 85% and a pass has to be higher than 50%, we are at risk of proudly raising a non-competitive, uneducated generation which will have no appreciation of the value of working hard.
Problems with the education system are many and won’t just end when OBE is gone, though I have some thoughts. The way I see it, first thing would be to scrap the OBE curriculum altogether and adopt a more traditional method of education (e.g. GCE, O and A levels) which would depend less on the feelings, values, attitudes and beliefs of the pupils and emphasise the importance of attaining factual knowledge. In a country where the majority of pupils still lack the basic skills of literacy and numeracy, it’s unrealistic to lay the responsibility at the feet of the student by implementing an airy-fairy curriculum that does not specify or require a particular style of teaching or learning.
Secondly, I would revamp and bring back the teacher training colleges operating in the apartheid era. These were shut down by the department because they were seen as dysfunctional. In 2007, the ANC called for the reopening of the teacher training colleges to address the lack of teaching skills in the country. This idea was never followed through on. It’s a shame this wasn’t rectified to ensure there was still a channel that produced quality teachers. For regardless of how they were perceived after the apartheid era, they produced a high standard of competent teachers - something which has been found to be lacking thereby resulting in the “dysfunction” being passed on at school.
Thirdly, and probably the hardest to fix, teachers should not be at the bottom of the school chain. Lack of support and resources, being underpaid and subject to violence have resulted in many of the good teachers we had abandoning ship and looking elsewhere for better opportunities. It’s foolish to assume that quality teachers will hang around under such unsavoury conditions. There are many examples in and around Africa of education systems that have worked and produced quality students able to compete on a global platform and hold their own. How much would it hurt to go on a fact-finding mission and learning some lessons from those places. The cost of an airplane ticket and swallowing your ego is nothing compared to the cost of having an ignorant future generation.
With a fifth of the national budget going to education, parents should demand better schooling and better institutions for their children. I dare anyone to blame the previous regime for the current lack of educated children. In 16 years, these problems should have been rectified or at least be well on their way to being fixed. We have the budget and the freedom to give every child a good education and yet we have failed them miserably. As a nation we should be ashamed. The success of campaigns such as the World Cup should feel hollow when we look around and realise we have failed to give our future generation a chance to succeed. In a chilling statement, Cornia Pretorius from the Mail & Guardian stated: “The single most important legacy of OBE is another lost generation in South Africa”.
But then maybe we should have known better than to trust our children’s education to a woman who said, “Matric results do not make you a good leader”.
You don't need a prophet to tell you that 12 years of untrained people makes for groot kak.
As I see it the real issue, like so much with the ANC government, is implementation. Even if OBE were the best system in the world it is useless when the teachers don't have the skills, equipment or text books.
To solve the current problem we really need to get back to basics. As you say - keep the standards consistent, also have school inspectors who not only can help teachers perform better but also identify systemic problems, and remove the remainder of the large bureaucracy whose sole function seems to be to give even more work to the teachers and principals who are actually responsible for delivery.
Let us reach a point where just 75% of students who enter grade 1 will eventually be able to pass a reasonable matric. Once we have this right, then we can start playing around with theoretical pie-in-the-sky academic systems.
If I can put forward a simple reason and a simple solution.
It seems plain as a pikestaff that the key to learning is competency in the three R's. Primary education should therefore concentrate on giving pupils that competency. In particuar, they must be able to read and write competently in their home language and English/Afrikaans as they enter senior school. Without it, they have little or no hope of progressing further.
Many universities have taken three year courses and expanded them to four with the intention to provide that competency. However, since our linguistic learning abilities are at their greatest in infancy and childhood, that is far too late to deliver the capability in the time available.
As a result, however competent a child might be, they will be severely disadvantaged if they cannot read and understand textbooks, and nowadays, information culled from the Internet.
Solution 1 - intense focus on the three R's.
When are people going to realize that governments are like dairy farmers; yes, they "care" for their cattle, but only to the extent that they can produce milk. Keeping the nation dumb is the only way governments can get away with the gross corruption and ineptitude that epitomizes not just ours, but every government around the world...
Since OBE is purportedly based on Evidence based practice or the so called what works movement, it would defeat the whole idea of evidence based education if there is no evidence that OBE is working. Perhaps the way they can accommodate the struggling students is by expanding the O and A level curriculums to include non-academic subjects such as plumbing to ensure that those who are not gifted academically are not left behind.
The English education system has gone through major changes but it is still highly fallible. Currently the A levels are too easy, there is violence in classes in the deprived neighbourhoods and there has been a bad shift from traditional subjects to the modern softer subjects such as citizenship, IT/ICT etc. The current sec of education is trying to have it overhauled but whether they can succeed, we have to wait and see.
OBE is only part of the problem. I reckon greater damage was done with the retrenchment of 130,000 white teachers in 1995-96. These teachers averaged more than 20 years classroom experience. They were the cream. (many of them maths and science masters)
Getting rid of the most experienced third of ou teaching profession obbviously compromised pupils. Much worse, though, it also compromised younger teachers, who lost out on an entire generation of Mentors. Without essential mentorship our base teaching capacity has gone to the dogs.
Rebuilding Mentorship capacity will take generations. This is the stuff of Institutional Memory. This loss of Mentorship has occured not only in our teaching profession, but in many other institutions (Eskom, Water Affairs, Municipal Management, Business etc)
It might be naive but I am not convinced this situation cannot be salvaged, I seriously doubt its as complicated as they make it seem. If South Africa gave a fifth of the dedication and resources it gave to the World Cup we could be well on our way to giving our children the education they deserve.
Education is a moving target, and what works for one set of students may not work for another, which is why constant re-evaluation is essential. This is also why I'm against uniform measurement standards (such as the especially craptacular No Child Left Behind law here in the US which is hated by most teachers in the nation, requiring schools to show continued growth in standardized test scores without taking into account special education populations, including children with learning disabilities. This law also tends to ensure those schools most in need of funding lose it due to high failure rates, thus perpetuating poor education in traditionally poor, predominantly minority school districts, which helps perpetuate poverty in those regions.). As best I can tell, No Child Left Behind has guaranteed that we are educating a class of youth who can take a standardized test (often coached for weeks beforehand by their teachers), but who can't think for themselves, or critically about the world around them. The very deep cynic in me can't help but think that's exactly what our government would like to see.
I agree with you that lowering standards isn't the answer, but rather holding young people to a higher standard. The Texas Supreme Court just recently ruled that school districts in the state cannot require minimum grades be assigned to coursework. I've seen students coming in as first year university students who don't know how to construct a thesis statement/argument, who can't think critically, some who can't even spell, and these are mostly high performing students (my university admits most of its freshman class from students ranked academically in the top 8% of their graduating class). And the students are often surprised at what is expected of them when they reach the university level. I imagine in some ways they even feel a little betrayed by their school districts.
To make systematic process improvement may require a combination of approaches, including those you mention above. Investing in teachers (something sadly an issue over here as well), giving them the resources they need, both in terms of training (including mentoring) and materiel, focusing on basic (and then more advanced) skills acquisition (along with factual knowledge, although that is a bit of a slippery slope since most "facts" are really interpretation of data) will go a long way. This is something my own country needs to do as well, yet seems not too interested in pursuing.
Speaking as a parent, I have a child with an exceptionally high IQ and I have experienced first-hand how OBE dumbs down students. There are tiny little flaws in the system which will never get mentioned, but have a huge impact on the future of our children. Why? Why not encourage and stimulate those kids that show potential to achieve greatness, why do we hold them back? It's been up to me as a parent to give my child the additional stimulation that she needs, to keep her brain sparking or I fear she'll end up achieving little or nothing in her life.
My child is not the only one though, there are others that I've come across that also show brilliance and the schools do nothing to encourage this and tease out the greatness that they can achieve. We NEED these kids to be challenged and stimulated because they will run this country one day. These are the kids that truly know nothing of our past troubles, having only grown up in a vibrant, multi-cultural society. They don't see colour like some of us still do.
They certainly don't need subjects such as Life Orientation and weekly tests on the correct method of washing your hands - I feel this is a total waste of an opportunity to really lead our children and teach them well.
We have managed to enrol her in an excellent state school, but the school is run by a rebellious principal that has hung onto some of the old values of the previous regime. I'm not sure how he gets away with it, but on the whole the kids coming out of this school have an excellent foundation on which to build their secondary education - but what about high school? I'm now looking at home schooling for high school, using the cambridge system, even if it costs me a fortune in tuition fees. The last thing I want is to launch an 18 year old onto an unsuspecting community when she is ill-equipped to become a contributing member of society.
Nearly 2 decades have passed and we do have a lost generation out there - I've employed several of them and they really are an uninspired, lazy bunch. It's too late for them, they will have to learn as adults in the jobs they take...but we can still make a difference to the youngsters that have some schooling years ahead of them.
Often I walk into a test having done almost no studying, and I achieve high marks because the work is too easy. And this is bad: it develops a really poor work-ethic that does not bode well for tertiary education. Already I am stressing about my procrastination habits, and they are EXTREMELY difficult to break once they've been entrenched for 12 years.
Another thing that absolutely infuriates me about IEB education (I cannot really comment on government education having not properly experienced it) is the ethereal nature of it: the mark is left to the discretion of (often incompetent) teachers, with no standard actually being set. The greatest example of such subjectivity is most definitely in IEB english. It is IMPOSSIBLE (I repeat IMPOSSIBLE) to achieve 100% for english. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that English is standardised and it's just the fact that EVERY SINGLE student is incapable of achieving all that is required. Instead, it is most definitely a case where the teacher will mark a piece of work, NOT ACTUALLY KNOWING WHAT 100% LOOKS LIKE. Not only that, but the standard for 100% has not actually been set. How can anyone mark an essay out of 100% if they do not know what 100% looks like?
This gives teachers the power to invent a mark, with absolutely no substantiation. Often I have poured myself into creative essays for hours, practically choosing every single word for a reason, only to receive a mediocre mark of 83%. When confronted, my English teacher merely looked at me with a smile, and said, "Sorry, but the rubric says this and that...", yet upon inspection of the rubric, it is quite clear that my essay (and indeed quite a few of my classmates' essays) easily achieved what was specified on the rubric, and even exceeded the requirements.
However, one can argue that perhaps my classmates and I just aren't producing work of a high enough standard. I actually wish this was the case, but it is not. In my next work, I half-heartedly undertook to write yet another creative essay, finishing the entire thing (planning and all) in an hour, while surfing the internet and playing my guitar. I didn't feel too confident about this essay, but I ended up getting 83% for it.
It is quite obvious that the subject of English lends itself WHOLLY to complete subjectivity. I find this unacceptable. It really makes english a superfluous language. Not only that, but it kills one's confidence: having worked so hard on that first essay, I seriously began to doubt my writing skills. Thankfully I took the SAT Reasoning Tests, and I received a score of 12/12 for my essay there, so I gained my confidence back: I know I can write at least half-decently when I try, and no subjective (and frankly incompetent) english teacher is going to tell me otherwise. My concern with this is the amount of good writers that are being dissuaded from writing anything because of english marks.
English is, however, a subjective subject at it's core, especially with writing, as everyone connects with a piece differently. However, I was recently shocked to find that maths is ALSO subject to subjectivity!
In a recent test, a question asked for the sum to infinity of the geometric series (m-5) + (m-5)^2 + (m-5)^3 + ... when m = 7. This is clearly a divergent series, which extends to positive infinity: simplify it, and you'll get 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + .... However, the IEB maths department, and my math teacher maintains, quite ridiculously, that the answer is -2. That's right, minus 2. In a subject as rigorous as mathematics, to see such a shocking failure of basic logic across a large board of teachers is quite disturbing.
It would appear that the education systems in place not only dumb down the students, but also dumb down the teachers: teachers who have little knowledge in a subject area are being forced to teach it without ever properly learning it themselves. That's not to say that the teachers are inherently bad: they are just not being allowed to become good. It's a vicious circle that needs to be broken.
The institution of Mathematical Literacy is one of the biggest crimes against humanity that I've ever seen. In my opinion, it is the goal of humanity to strive beyond mediocrity and thus progress into a state that's more valuable than the last. Mathematical Literacy is an embrace and acceptance of mediocrity. The subject matter in it is unbelievably basic, and requires almost no work-input to achieve a good set of marks.
So many of my peers argue "Well, I don't NEED maths, so why should I bother?" It is this sense of laziness that, more than anything else (including bad education systems, bad teachers, bad implementation), is leading to a "lost generation".
These students need to somehow realise that the subject maths is not just about learning maths. It is about developing competency in logical thought and critical reasoning, which I believe are absolutely essential in the positive movement away from mediocrity. My dad puts it nicely: "you are giving a 16 year old the choice between something easy and something challenging. What do you think they're going to do?"
Therefore, we cannot blame everyone else for our problems though; indeed the LARGEST proportion of blame MUST be leveled at the students themselves. Many of my classmates are completely disinterested in class, with their minds probably dreaming about the vast amount of alcohol they are going consume over the next weekend. Self-motivation and self-discipline, two extremely essential things, are completely absent and suppressed my many students, simply because it is FAR easier to live without them. I find that unacceptable, and unfortunately, I cannot see how this can be fixed with any ease. I do think it is fixable though.
I do believe that the first step towards fixing this problem should be to raise the standards of education once again. A child who gets 60% for difficult work will most likely get 60% for easier work, so it makes sense to make the work more difficult, so that they are challenged and can at least learn more. Dumbing things down merely contributes to a sense of mythical entitlement.
And your dad's a wise man - 16 year-olds haven't changed for millenia!
I just wish they'd split chemistry and physics and teach them more holistically. Having taken the SAT Subject Test in Physics, I can assure you that the physics you learn in the subject "science" at school is, at most, about 20% of what an 18 year-old should know in physics (according to the College Board in America). I cannot fathom why they lump chemistry and physics together. My parents, who experienced physics and chemistry as separate subjects in their schools (in the former Yugoslavia) are also at a loss as to why things are different here.
Fluffy
Our economy desperately needs entrepreneurs and business developers, not people who if employed, accept that doing the minimum possible to provide indifferent or grudging service for a maximum wage and benefits is acceptable, or if not employed, think that they have no responsibilities other than to sit on their bums holding their hands out expecting them to be filled.
If we educate chldren to be lazy adults who believe that everything comes to them rather than their needing to strive for it, they will carry that attitude into the workplace.
If we educate children that you can safely ignore the responsibility that comes with an entitlement, they will carry that attitude into adult life.
If our children are taught by disinterested, intermittently attending couldn't care less teachers who keep their jobs and salaries, they will carry the attitude that performance and reward are not linked into the workplace.
That is the critical nature of education and how it will shape all our futures.
Brendah, keep thumping that tub.
Now only if the people who have the decision-making power in the corridors of the bureaucracy of education, would actually read something like this...