Education and the South African Family

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this very important subject. The Bible has much to say about education as it talks about insight, wisdom and understanding, as well as training and teaching. I would like to urge each one of you to do a Bible study on this subject, so that you may be better motivated and equipped for the task God has given us.

Education has been a battleground for many years in South Africa. The National Party used education to mould the minds of the youth to help them stay in power for forty years. The National Party also used education to deny black people opportunities. The African National Congress had the slogan "Liberation before Education" and so thousands of school children rioted and burned their schools.

After 1994, there were some improvements in education, but for most children the situation has deteriorated. Improvements occurred as the new government recognised the right of parents to teach their own children at home rather than sending them to a state school. As conditions in state schools deteriorated, a huge number of private schools, many with a Christian ethos, also sprang up. Teachers and parents realised that it is necessary to make the Bible foundational in education.

Sadly, conditions in many of the schools have deteriorated. Crimes like theft, drug dealing and rape have increased in the schools, just as they have increased in the rest of society. The new "human rights culture" has made it very difficult to deal with problematic pupils - or should I say learners? The procedure required to expel an incorrigible child makes it extremely difficult for a school to deal with a child who is not only making trouble, but also being a bad influence on others.

In 1996 the Schools Act forbade schools to administer corporal punishment (i.e. hidings). This has taken away from teachers and principals the most effective tool they had for maintaining discipline within the school. In 2000 the Constitutional Court found in Christian Education South Africa versus Minster of Education that parents of children at private Christian schools may not authorise teachers to use corporal punishment on their behalf to discipline their children.

There are other signs of stress in the education system. There is a lack of discipline, with teachers reported absent without leave, drunk at school and sexually abusing the children. In addition, there is a shortage of teachers, and the number of teachers currently being trained is not adequate to meet future needs. There is a high prevalence of HIV among teachers. This is already resulting in the need for additional sick leave, and higher premature deaths, leading to a greater shortage. There is a skills shortage, with teachers of subjects like mathematics and science in very short supply. By poor management, the current government is effectively denying this generation an advanced mathematics and science education.

On top of these stresses is the stress created by education minister Kader Asmal. Asmal assumed office on 17 June 1999, after his predecessor Sibusisu Bengu died. While Bengu had had similar ideas to Asmal, due to sickness he was less able to implement them. Asmal has applied his energy, insight and relentless drive to the Department of Education. He has pushed through a number of nasty pieces of legislation, anti-Christian policies, a new curriculum and has generally attempted to tighten state control of all education.

Asmal has talked about a "raft of education laws". There has been an education laws amendment bill passed by Parliament every year since he took office, in addition to other education bills. The proposed 2003 education laws amendment bill wants to take the decision to pay state-employed teachers extra money away from the school governing bodies. This means that a school which wants to attract an excellent maths or science teacher has to go through a bureaucratic process, up to seven months long, to do so.

The new religion in education policy is an excellent example of Asmal's statist attitude. Rather than letting local school governing bodies decide their own religious ethos, he wants all religious workers out of schools and his "specially trained" teachers in. As Louis Green, ACDP MP said, "if it weren't for the Christian workers in schools, I wouldn't be a Christian." Ironically, schools asking, "please won't you come and teach our children morals - they don't know right and wrong any more", have approached Christians.

The National Curriculum Statement issued in the middle of 2001 included revisionist history, examinable sex education and the promotion of inter-faith religion.

A clear example of abuse of taxpayer money was the Minister of Education v Doreen Harris case, decided in the Constitutional Court in 2001. Professor Asmal had lost the previous case in the High Court and so he appealed to the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court ruled that Asmal had acted beyond his legal powers and ordered the State - in other words, us, the tax payers - to pay the costs. What was this about? Asmal would not back down on his dictatorial policy to not allow a six year old girl, who was ready for school, to enrol at a PRIVATE school, since she was not yet seven.

Rather than focus on getting the basics right, the Department of Education has sown confusion by deciding to reduce the number of matric subjects (eliminating Bible Education), getting target shooting out of schools, putting a new - and probably less useful - matric testing system in place, centralising university entrance, requiring all educational institutions to come under one body and even talking about scrapping school uniforms. One almost wonders if they are using a whirlwind of activity to try to keep us confused so that we won't figure out what they are really doing.

You may ask why is there such a strong attempt to revolutionise education. The answer is that the Department realises something that many Christians don't. They realise that many people still hold more strongly to the Bible's values than to the Constitution's. Their time is limited. If this government is to stay in power, it will have to get the youth to abandon the Bible and internalise the values of the Constitution

What can we do? Firstly, we need to be praying. God has graciously changed the course of the Department of Education in the past through prayer and pressure, and some nasty proposals have been watered down. In addition, Kader Asmal has cancer and will be retiring after the next election.

Next, we need to be working for a new government and a new Constitution. National elections are held every five years, and the next one is around April 2004. We need to be involved in getting political parties, which represent us, to represent us. We need to volunteer to help and we need to put our money where our mouth is.

We must use the rights we have. If your children are in a public school, make sure that the governing body represents you. Alternatively, make sure that you get elected onto the governing body. Remember also that the government's powers are limited. You have the right to a written reason for every decision, and that reason must explain which law gave the government the power to make that decision. Make sure you know the headmaster, and back him or her up in prayer and in action. Use "opt-out" forms to protect your children (see The Pink Agenda). Stand together with other Christians where court cases are required.

Finally, we may not be able to individually stop the whole tide of change. But we can build the dykes and put up a lighthouse in the territory the Lord has given us.

Jeanine McGill 14, 2001, p. 3.