Ready for another educative festival
The educational disparities throughout the Western Cape cannot be ignored.
They need to be addressed if the full economic potential and individual
development of the people in the province is to be realized.
Through this year’s Learning Cape Festival we tried to give information and communicate the ideal of lifelong learning through our theme, ‘What do you have to say,’ in a series of events that cut across the usually forgotten rural communities and a few urban events.
Sometimes it’s hard to break traditional boundaries that entrench a narrow thinking: It is fine to be poor. It’s permissible to live a life without self-help skills and it is perfectly normal to be ignorant to learning opportunities that exist but we can safely say we are slowly breaking these barriers. Learning is our passion.
And Carol Medel-Anonuevo, Senior Research Specialist for UNESCO Institute for Education exquisitely puts it a cross for us.
“We look forward to that learning society where everyone has an equal chance to participate. We need to celebrate as we work, and move together towards that society that promotes lifelong learning. The learning festivals are an opportunity to acknowledge the role of learning in transforming life, communities and society.”
As the curtain officially comes down over the 2008 Learning Cape Festival, we take stock of events that happened over a period of six weeks. What did the communities say
The Eden and Central Karoo area
Learners discover more about science
The key question about the events here is how does the adult education centres maintain the momentum of the pledges of support that the business, municipalities and other stakeholders have made. Once pledges of support have been made – what is the next step? There is a window of opportunity open in terms of the municipalities, who are also conducting ABET classes. Can the ABET centres become a service provider for these municipalities? Can the ABET centres attempt to engage with farmers in order to ensure that their people are educated and that a tradition of learning is inculcated into the families? How do these communities now continue to talk about the right to education, the need for continual learning within a context of seemingly increasing gaps between the haves and have-nots and the low economic growth patterns within the deep rural areas?
The question of accessing work opportunities remains a great obstacle to development within these areas. Linked to this are the lack of opportunities for sharpening skills of skills development for the unemployed. One initiative that may assist this process is the workshop of customer relations, which is being conducted by the W&R SETA after the festival within the Beaufort West and Worcester area at the end of September. This initiative provides an opportunity for the Festival organizers to make contact with their audience and provide a possibility for them to attend a learning programme that would enhance their capabilities. As a start they programme is targeting people who are not necessarily paying skills levies and therefore may miss out on skills development opportunities.
“Tell us more about learning opportunities,” school children ask?
The fact that there are now two separate directorates providing FET to school going age children as well as youth or adults poses a concern. The two institutions – schools and FET colleges are thus in competition for the same audiences – namely school children. In two cases schools were not interested in sending their children to FET Colleges thus barring them from these opportunities. While the reasoning is plausible – schools will lose numbers of learners and thus be required to drop their numbers of teachers poses a real problem for schools. While at the same time, withholding the children from these opportunities is an indictment on their potential choice of careers.
Cape Winelands
Music can create the vibe of learning and open horizons
The focus on family literacy was a highlight. Conducted in Bonnievale, the centre drew from four primary schools’ experiences namely, Dagbreek (Montague), Bonnievale (Bonnievale), Ashbury (Montague), and Roussow (Montague). There is one facilitator for all four areas who conducts here classes with passion and commitment. The hall was filled with the mums and children, while both a parent and a grandparent spoke about the changes they had experienced through the family literacy programme. What came out strongly continually is that many parents do not know how to help their children with their school work. The fact that there is a new OBE curriculum not only brings fear but also withdrawal from that which is both foreign and new. Once they engage in the programme they find that it is not that hard, while it takes hard work; it is not as boring as ‘school’, that learning is fun. Parents express the joy in participating in their children’s learning and in the process learning as well.
What is of special importance is the fact that family literacy is actually about family learning. The learning within this unit goes beyond literacy and numeracy but settles on the aspect of learning, together and as individuals, within a comfortable environment. The love for reading, the passion for knowing and the interest in the unknown is what drives these learners.
As a family learning project, there are many issues that the facilitators have to deal with – parenting, behavioural challenges, poverty, relationships that shift, patterns that are moved, because of the learning processes that are new and required new ways of being organized.
National Business Initiative
It is not often that a whole education district that has no history comes together to forge a new mission with the leaders of Higher Education Institutions. The Overberg district is one such district. Having fallen under the Cape Winelands district, for the first time, Overberg is on its own, but they are not alone.
The day was awe-inspiring. With Professor O’Connell from University of Western Cape, Professor Roberts from Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Professor Jansen, the room full of officials and senior management staff were challenged to consider not only the immediate and current needs, but also the global challenges and what these mean for us locally and continentally. Yes, there are grave problems within the education system. The new OBE system has in its infancy and excitement thrown out everything, including practices that were good in their own rights. All too often we have associated everything prior to 1994 as worthless or not worth any value. Yet the fact that many of us are products of that society should mean that there might have been some value in some of the things that were done. Not everything has been useless. Perhaps the fact that everything prior to 1994 had values that disadvantaged and oppressed the majority of people has clouded our vision of what was good and worthy.
Khayelitsha
MEC Yousuf Gabru is passionate about teaching
‘We need teachers’, said MEC Gabru. In response, the youth giggled as if to say, “what a teacher, hell, I’d rather be in hell!’ While the fact remains that we need teachers, the more pressing challenge is how to sell teaching to new recruits. Historically, or rather in ancient times, teaching was a calling, a profession of commitment without the pledge or oath that doctors and nurses take. In the less distant past, in Apartheid times, teaching was career that offered the oppressed a chance to study further (College or University), a bursary that was not payable because they could not (or would not) track you down and a guarantee of a job (even if it was in an outlying rural area). Many people became teachers for these reasons and many stayed for no apparent reason. Today teaching is a job, like any other job. Few hold the pledge of teaching closing to their hearts and the fact is that those who do are so few, that now we have to recruit teachers. What a task? Teaching does not have a good brand, there are few excellent champions and how many of us really want to enter a job where you could sworn at each day, stabbed on every other day and one day, just die emotionally, or physically.
What kind of culture allows one to say to someone older that you: ‘jou ma se ….!’ And allow you to get away with it? Getting kids to believe in teaching is going to take a whole lot more than highlighting the perks – holidays every quarter, a long summer break, home earlier than most people and so on. What about job satisfaction – seeing the light in a child’s eyes when he discovers that a rainbow is the refraction of white light? What about epiphanies where the way of children learning is spread across the room like a beam of light– some children build puzzles by connecting parts while others follow the colours? Mark Shuttleworth made nerds look attractively hot. Tito Mboweni and Trevor Manuel make paying taxes a national conscription and anything to do with money, taxes and economy easier to understand and therefore a viable option for a career. While Nelson Mandela made forgiveness look hip, I cannot think about anyone who makes teaching ‘sexy’ in the advertising language, not in the normal day to day media language – I hasten to add before the word becomes a malemic example. What makes teaching more attractive is teachers. Perhaps we do not have enough good teachers in the limelight so that we can see what they look like before it becomes a foreign concept and before we start recruiting a host of foreign nationals who will be teaching our children other languages and other cultures before they learn their own properly.
Families are places where the first introduction to language and culture is made. As the child enters school the development of this cultural body is extended to that of the school. Surely, this is the place where that sense of identity that was rooted at home is nurtured to full fruition. We need people who can carry the body politic of culture into the hearts and minds of children. You see having the best teachers is just a quick solution to a long-long term problem – that of being an educated and their globally competitive nation who can determine their own agenda. That’s really the big picture.
TETA took some students to SAMTRA on the 5th September
A career the Marine industry has a romantic feel to it – ships, ports, exotic foods and different languages is top of mind awareness. Yet, while this type of career seems great, the requirements to get in are daunting and the discipline of working in this industry is firm. Not only does one have to fairly good grades for maths and science, but one should also have the propensity to live on sea for at least 3 months and one cannot engage in smoking and drinking. It is not often that students are told at the outset in graphic detail what the grade and living requirements are. But if you think that a ship is a small isolated community, self-sufficient in all aspects, it makes sense that having a sense of well-being is imperative.
As we saw it...
Pulling the ropes of banner events, making sure nothing runs off the track in other departments Andre van Schalkwyk shares his views on the just ended festival. Read on…
“It is important that the steering committee knows what is happening before and during the festival and that the details of the events are clearly outlined from beginning to end. The content (minute by minute) assists all to know what will transpire during the event. Without this we would leave much to improvisation which tends be very risky.
The first event in Worcester was tremendous and exposed the entire team to the homely and gracious Overberg and Cape Winelands area. The theme of lifelong learning was reinforced. What a nice start to a promise of a wonderful festival to come.
I was involved in banner events and logistical assistance in the urban areas. There are too many events and workshops that took place to outline them all, however the National Business Initiative (NBI), Fundamentals Training Centre (FTC) and Pascap events stood out for me.
A student registers for further education at Khayelitsha expo
The crisp and passionate explanations provided by Professor O 'ConnelI and Professor Jansen at the NBI seminar around the state of education in the country and their plea to school principals to work harder and smarter to educate and facilitate education in schools for the betterment of society.
Pascap inspired as an organization who receives very little funding and encouraged young girls to remain in schools and educate themselves though a system of peer and mentor encouragement and engagement. They have inspired girl children from adverse backgrounds to stay in school.
The Spring School with the FTC’s varied programme allowed all those who needed to debate or learn alternative life skills to participate in a environment of higher education and for some it was an environment that had not been accessible
The last event in Khayelitsha was a great success. This was as a result of all stakeholders’ involvement.
Generally, I can look back at this festival and know in my heart that it has been challenging and encouraging, there have been moments of brilliance but also disappointments.
But, in the final analysis there has been an evolution from a very obscure festival two years ago that was urban-orientated and mainly involved in urban events to a festival this year that is all encompassing both in rural and urban areas with a clearer vision and sharper focus on what needs to be done around lifelong learning in the province and how to partner and be strategic around partnerships to assist in the vision and focus of lifelong learning.”