Praying with the Pope: Prayer for Education

Intention: We pray that educators may be credible witnesses, teaching fraternity rather than competition, and helping the youngest and most vulnerable above all.

If ever there was a prayer intention for South Africa, then this is it! Perhaps the most heinous crime committed by the old regime was that of “Bantu Education”. This was a perversion of education, a curriculum purposely designed to hold people back and keep them as labourers on farms or in mines or factories. Clearly this was not really education at all, but social engineering.

What has stunned and disappointed educationalists is how the mentality of underperformance instilled by Bantu Education has been so difficult to root out. Its enduring effects on the minds of today’s young are Verwoerd’s revenge — a terrible reminder that it can take much longer to change a culture, especially a bad one, than to overthrow a political system.

How is it possible, one wonders, that young people who were born after 1994 somehow imbibe a deep lack of confidence in their abilities to excel academically?

The answer seems to lie in the “hidden curriculum” of mediocrity in our government schools. This curriculum is made manifest when one notices schoolchildren wandering the streets of our towns and cities in the early afternoon. One can be quite sure that their counterparts in Japan, China or Europe are being kept busy in the afternoons. If the future economy is going to be a “knowledge economy”, then our local schoolchildren are going to be at a serious disadvantage.

What does the future hold?

Indeed, a terrible phrase comes to mind, coined by the Israeli historian and social commentator Yuval Harari. He speaks of a world in which there are “useless classes”, sections of society which are not educated enough to participate in the coming high-tech, artificial intelligence and roboticised economy, and who are doomed to a lifetime of unemployment and poverty.

Arguably, therefore, the most disappointing thing about the post-1994 regime has been its failure to foster that culture of teaching and learning which Bantu Education was so diabolically intended to stunt. As we move into a time of economic instability, and as we grapple with that other apparently intractable South African problem — unemployment — it is hard to see how our education problem can be righted easily and rapidly.

The present situation in the South African primary and secondary education fields is hardly a scenario which encourages bright young people to go into teaching. Even so, we should encourage those with the necessary courage to do so.

We certainly do need high-quality educators, teachers who can lead and inspire their students not only to do well, but to do so while simultaneously overcoming the outrageously unjust legacy of the past.