What you then find are desperate people alongside the rail, hiking, desperate and willing to board anything that comes by. When they do not finally get on, they grow despondent. They become demotivated, they act outside the law, they end up in the street, they end up in jail, they end up in hospital. Some die while others become statistics. Those that make it to their destination are very few and far between, not enough to make any real impact on their own, which then results in the shortage of everything they were supposed to do.
Chairperson, to my mind this is unfortunately the scenario that you are negotiating in education. Parts of this scenario, I must say, can be attributed to old history, while other parts, in my own judgment, is our own mistake in judging the readiness, the relevance, the fitness, the distance to cover and the effectiveness of the new parts.
There was a time when the business of education was the learner, when education was used for what it could give and do, and was not allowed to be hijacked by politics. Education has become a bargaining chip and a boxing ring between teachers and government. Who gets caught up in that crossfire? It is the learner, who neither has the capacity nor the resources for recourse.
Education has become a battlefield for tenders for transporting learners; it has become a battlefield for tenders for distributing books. Education has become a battlefield for tenders for feeding schemes, a battlefield for the next tender and the next. It is not a battlefield for knowledge production and character building, as it should be.
Today, the Minister is presenting to us the budget of the Department of Basic Education. Nobody can accuse you, Madam Minister, of lack of vision or strategy. Nobody can accuse you of not having a plan or lack of effort, what with your experience as an educator, which we can see, and what with the skilled workforce that you have.
But for any plan to work you need an enabling and conducive environment. The environment of teaching, as it stands, leaves much to be desired; the culture of teaching, as it stands, leaves much to be desired. You need, Madam Minister, an environment where a teacher is a teacher and a learner is a learner.
A teacher is a professional who must look like one and must behave as such. A teacher must have a credo by which to live, that of loyalty to the profession, and dedication to service and serving the country. This needs to be reinforced and not negotiated, Madam Minister, if not by fair means, by foul. You cannot have teachers telling you how they need to be supervised. We cannot allow democracy to destroy us.
But, of course, not everybody who teaches is a teacher, which is a huge problem! I am aware that you are fixing this.
Equally, Chairperson, a learner must be a learner, dressed as such and behaving as such. Being a learner is never being in competition with the teacher. Being a learner means accepting guidance and discipline, and being humble enough to learn. I am speaking of the contract I tabled earlier.
Parents must also come to the party. They cannot leave nurturing children to the teachers. Parents must ground their children, they must discipline their children, and they must create a sense in their children of wanting to be somebody one day. They must be role models to their children. They must demand accountability from the children. The role of parenting is fast being drowned and replaced by television, by Facebook, Twitter, MXit, iPod, and so on. There is hardly time for family.