South Africa Journal

Outcomes Based Education

Monday, August 14

Well, no, it isn't a catchy title, but that is what South Africa is currently struggling with. How do they revise their educational system to make it more effective for the new South Africa? The answer, was a plan to replace the current teacher-directed rote learning and post-colonial curriculum with something much more American -- group learning, student projects, less emphasis on exams, and more emphasis on the thinking process. Those who proposed OBE wanted it to be completely phased in by 2005, but after many objections there is a new, modified proposal, and still lots of discussion.

There is no question that SA needs a new educational system. The current rote learning is not helping anyone and the problems for history teaching are of course the greatest. The rote education fit with the needs of apartheid -- making sure that students only learned specific facts on specific topics, and avoided political discussions. I have heard that suspected teachers were monitored through two-way intercoms. Now, with integrated schools and a great desire to increase the education of colored and black students to meet the needs of a modern workforce (jobs for which they had been ineligible until just 6 years ago) the challenge is on.

In the meantime, students sit in classes and memorize the successes of the United Nations or the poetry of John Dunne. Jan, a young Afrikaner (and friend of Erhardt) was teaching in a school in the northern Transvaal. He was teaching Robert Frost's poem about stopping in the woods on a snowy evening to students who had never seen snow. The next day he decided to bring in photographs he had taken of snow to give the students an idea of what it was like. They complained that this was a waste of time -- snow would not be on the exam. It is so close to the opening of Dickens *Hard Times* where farm children memorize the definition of a horse, that it is not even funny. -- But what do you do?

Next to the finishing school in Langa is a nursery school run by a sweet and terribly dedicated nun and a lay staff. The facility is one of the most charmingly architected nursery schools I have seen anywhere, with lots of stuffed animals, real cots for naptime, books and puzzles and activities galore. In addition to separate rooms for the 2-3, 4, and 5-year-olds, there is a special quiet room for doing puzzles. Sister explained that no child is given a puzzle that is too difficult, but gradually the master the range of puzzles through an individualized "curriculum" of puzzle challenges.

But what about the language? The children here all speak Xhosa (I have learned to say it with a click, but like my Chinese, it makes most people laugh when I do.) The written materials in the school are all in English, but it is a foreign language to them. How do you learn to read in a foreign language? Indeed it is impossible to pass matric exams in any of the 9 official tribal languages -- only English and Afrikaans will do -- so every black child is pretty much forced to master a second language in order to complete secondary education. That's not all bad, that's where the jobs are, but it does add to the challenge of how to focus the curriculum.

On one day that week, instead of teaching classes, Lindiwe, the director of the school who had invited me in the first place, had arranged to take me to see some other schools. We went to a primary school and a regular high school in Langa, then to a mixed school (colored and black) in Heidevelt, which is next to Guguletu. Lindiwe's childhood friend Sindiwe, who lives in New York, was also visiting this week, and the three of us made these visits, giving both Sindiwe and me the chance to speak to classes. Sindiwe speaks with passion about students' need to stay in school and avoid teen age pregnancies -- the surest guarantee of the slow track to success. She was in SA to participate in woman's day and talk about her books, including her latest, *Mother to Mother* about the story of an American named Amy Biehl who was killed in 1993, just before the elections.

After the school visits we hurried to her family home in Guguletu because we got word (aren't cell phones a miracle) that the Capetown newspaper was there for an interview. While she talked to them Lindiwe and I walked around the quiet streets of Guguletu where they both grew up. This was a black township where people were resettled when they were kicked out of white areas. Every house was built the same -- four rooms, with no indoor plumbing. When apartheid ended, everyone who had been a longtime resident was given their house, and now they have grown with added porches, garages, bathrooms etc. Families who can are selling and are moving out of Guguletu into places like Maitland, and others are moving in from the corrugated tin shacks that have so often been photographed. This is good for the families, but unsettles the community where leadership needs to change hands. We watched a brand new community center being built, but there aren't many businesses here. The finale to our day was a trip past these shacks to a place called the Crossroads, where we had a Xhosa meal in a historically restore building which lies fenced in on the most unlikely plot of bright green grass, right in the middle of all these shacks. Here a group of women are trying to make a tourist business of serving lunch to those willing to brave the townships. Lindiwe, Sindiwe and I had a great time, and I got some genuine homemade ginger beer.

What did I notice about the schools? Well the buildings were orderly (and of course there was tight security, with fences a little more ominous, but ultimately no different in purpose from those at Poly Prep. We noticed some classes where the teacher was not in the room and no explanation was given. I photographed a door to a faculty room that says "no learners permitted." I know it is just a figure of speech, but rue the day when teachers are not learners.

Alas, that would be my final conclusion. The challenge is not how to turn students into active learners, but how to turn teachers, who themselves were raised to be passive memorizers, into confident coaches and mentors to active student learning.

My last day at the finishing school I visited the criminal law classes which were a lot of fun. Even though there was some rote recitation of a page of facts about the relationship of alcoholism to crime, it was followed by discussion -- they students may not have seen snow, but they have certainly seen crime! I did a mini version of a trial I do in my own class about a girl who dies after a party and the class concluded it was the mother's fault. I am glad I bought a book on African family law so I can read up on how they came to that conclusion.