Gasant Abarder writes in a new #SliceofGasant column that he is fed up with the CAPS curriculum that focuses on just one type of learner.
Maths and Science still carry more prestige than the arts and languages at school. Yo! Teachers: Be brave enough to veer from that rigid syllabus designed to create clones and prepare kids for life.
After the first term in Grade 1, the teacher met with my wife and me to tell us she believed strongly that my daughter was dyslexic. She wrote her Es as 3s and got confused between lowercase Bs and Ds.
I didn’t buy it because the teacher wasn’t qualified to make a diagnosis. A learning support teacher with OT qualifications confirmed it wasn’t dyslexia, but she was younger than her peers, turning 7 only later that year, and had some catching up to do.
In Grade 6 now, my daughter is hardworking and regularly comes home with 6s and 7s. She’s great at Maths but has to work much harder in languages.
In Grade 1, then Sub A in 1984, I knew nothing most of the time and probably my biggest accomplishment was successfully removing boogers from my nose. My main memory wasn’t any of the lessons but rather of a kid who had to be taken to the sick bay for getting a crayon stuck up his nostril.
Those were simpler times, but by Grade 6 (then Standard 4), I had an inspiring teacher who went off syllabus to teach us Shakespeare, got us excited to read the collective works of Rudyard Kipling and I could rattle off every capital city of every country in the world.
I developed a love for reading and could write the living crap out of creative essays in both English and Afrikaans to the extent that my pieces were read to other classes. The only subject that brought me down was Maths.
This continued in high school and I got an H for standard grade Maths (probably what Maths Lit is now) in my first term in matric. With the help of a classmate, I was able to pass with an E-symbol for the National Senior Certificate, but it brought my otherwise good results down. I dropped physics as soon as we were able to choose subjects.
Luckily, my teachers made up for a lack of resources. As we prepared to enter a new South Africa, they pivoted from the set syllabus and taught us additional stuff about then US invasion of Iraq, the lie that was Jan van Riebeeck and crucial life skills. I had an Afrikaans teacher who took me to a workshop in his own time, presented by Die Burger, at an Afrikaans school, where I learnt about newspapering.
My point: This CAPS curriculum in place now is designed to create clones – one type of learner – and those who don’t excel at Maths and Science are not really encouraged to pursue their strengths in the arts. This is especially true at poorly resourced schools where there aren’t Maths and Science labs and you have to imagine a Bunsen burner. There are seldom arts, dance, drama and music classes.
My daughter is the captain of her school’s girls’ football team and displays leadership skills as a shadow prefect. But to cut it as a serious academic achiever, she’ll probably need Maths and Science, which she appears to have an aptitude for. Must come from her mom. It’s good because she aspires to be a lawyer.
The systemic test results in Grades 6 and 9 show a horror story. There are children in high school who haven’t mastered reading and they battle with numbers. There are many careers and vocations that don’t require Maths and Science but require critical thinking, which isn’t taught at school. Richard Branson is dyslexic but that didn’t stop him from becoming a billionaire.
We forget that children need to be children and learning also happens through socialisation and play. The amount of homework doesn’t leave any time in a system designed to rely heavily on achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
I can’t help my Grade 9 daughter with maths. Wait, I can’t even help my Grade 6 daughter with Maths. The CAPS curriculum is so focused on results that a term hardly starts and two weeks later there are assessments. When does the learning take place?
Some of my classmates back then were probably dyslexic and even others had learning abilities. Back then, these conditions didn’t have names, and we forged on without ADHD medication and everything else that is so quickly prescribed for children by psychiatrists.
We played in the rain, ate mud cakes and even earthworms (if we were so dared), and we learnt through social interaction, not social media. Don’t lock up your child and push them to get straight As. Each child is different. Focus on their strengths so they’re ready to face a cruel world where they can also rely on street smarts and emotional intelligence.
I’m not targeting teachers because they’re trapped in a system. Imagine having to deal with kids re-enacting a slave market during break time that goes viral on social media. Parents also have a joint responsibility because those kinds of racist acts are learnt behaviour at home.
For me, thank goodness I can write and create content. Otherwise, who knows what may have happened to this Maths dunce of the class.
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