Languages Solutions in Education Conference, Cape Teaching Institute,
Kuilsriver
26 May 2006
Each one teach one: Together building a learning home for all
Elkeen Leer Iemand - Saam Bou Ons 'n Leertuiste vir Almal
Omnye Ufundisa Omnye Sakha Kunye Ikhaya Lokufunda Lomntu Wonke Ms Pasiye
Ladies and gentlemen
It is an honour to be speaking to you on this occasion of the very first
conference at the Cape Teaching Institute and especially when the conference
theme is one which is so close to my heart and is, in fact one of my six
priorities as MEC.
I talked a bit about âhopeâ in my budget speech last week, building on the
concept of The Age of Hope of our President. Our Premier in his budget speech
noted that Gramsci "believed in hope rather than promises and hope is a long
affair". I want to say that hope encourages the development of imaginative
solutions to seemingly huge difficulties. In fact, David Halpin radically
argues that "unless hope has been aroused and is alive, there can be no
planning" / "ngaphandle kokuba ithemba liye lavuselelwa kwaye liphilile,
akunakubakho zicwangciso" / âtensy hoop gewek is en lewend is, kan daar geen
beplanning wees nie.â
The cultural historian, Raymond Williams, quoted by David Halpin, says that
it is only in a shared belief and insistence that there are practical
alternatives that the balance of forces and chances begins to alter. Once the
inevitabilities are challenged, he says, we begin gathering our resources for a
journey of hope/ reis met hoop / uhambo lwethemba. I see today as the beginning
of such an uhambo lwethemba. I do not think that you would all be here if
everything were just plain sailing at your schools and in your classrooms. We
do not talk about needing âsolutionsâ unless we think that we have âproblemsâ.
And we know that we do have problems in our classrooms and our schools. And I
am not going to just gloss over these today.
We have serious problems: our provincial literacy levels in Grades three and
six show a stark picture of differences. On the language tests, which are on
the level of Home Language English or Afrikaans, our ex-CED schools are doing
quite well; their good scores are counter-balanced by the ex-DET schools which
are faring badly and the ex-HOR (House of Representatives) schools, which make
up the majority of schools in the province, throw up scores which are, through
weight of numbers, close to our eventual provincial average. Researchers, like
Dr Heugh who will speak to you tomorrow, tell us that our province is doing
better than the others because we have such a high proportion of learners
learning through their own mother-tongue.
Our society was stratified and divided along racial lines in more ways than
we can list. Differential funding hit housing, schooling, job prospects, and
family life every possible part of people's worlds. It hit hope. I mention the
historical contexts of the schools because their results are telling us about
inequities that still exist. We need to identify these quite clinically and
then start to define, equally clinically, the practical alternatives that I
mentioned above. Each of us as an individual has to find and target and work
towards those solutions.
But my main point today is going to be about the power in our various
collectives. If we develop shared visions and set up joint forces then we have
got a much better chance of being driven by, let us call them valid
hopes.
I want to propose three main languages' solutions today.
Solution number one: Develop and support teachers
You are here today for a number of reasons.
* Some of you are coming to share your own tentative solutions, or ideas about
things that have worked for you. You are maybe a bit nervous and maybe not
concentrating very well on what I am saying right now. To you I say, well
done!
Thanks for your courage and creativity. Thanks for being contributors.
* Some of you have come to learn. You might have made huge sacrifices to get
here arranged childcare, borrowed money, driven for most of the day. To you I
say, well done! It takes character to say I have got something to learn. I do
not have all the answers. I am keen to make a difference. I will give up my
Saturday.
Some of you are here today and you are not planning to be here tomorrow. I
am referring particularly to those who have been here for this week as part of
a training programme but who have not taken up the option of staying on till
tomorrow. That saddens me. Learning is a long journey and it is a complex one.
Our learners have been put into our hands: their fragile futures, their dreams,
their children's futures and dreams they are all in our hands yours and mine.
But the kind of learning turnaround that this province needs has to be driven
by teachers who are also driven.
We need to know that our teachers will grab any chance for professional
development with open hands. I want to say that I know that tomorrow will be a
wonderful day. Dr Heugh is a remarkable expert, Mr Schreuder has a critical
message for you all as classroom leaders, and the parallel sessions look rich
and varied. What a feast! I urge you all, those who are only planning to be
day-trippers, to re-think.
This Institute is the kingpin of this "Teacher Support and Development"
solution. The world our learners are in is a new one. There is less reading and
more television (TV). There is less talking and more TV. Our teachers were not
trained to deal with children quite like these.
Our teachers were not trained to teach in multilingual classrooms but there
is been a huge migration of learners and that is what we are faced with. Our
teachers were trained in another curriculum with another approach altogether.
We have a new curriculum with a fundamentally different approach to teaching
and learning.
Our teachers have to have time out so they can stock up on new skills. And
they need more than a quick workshop at the end of a long hard day. The Cape
Teaching Institute (CTI) is a big part of our recipe for the future. Through
the CTI we can have teachers here, if needed, for weeks. We have built this
into our operational budget.
Ladies and gentlemen we will have to be scientific about building this
solution. We have schools of different types we have those that are basically
monolingual; we have those that are basically dual or parallel medium; we have
multi-grade rural schools; we have trilingual schools.
I want to announce here today that we will be very systematic both in our
selection of courses and in our selection of teachers to undergo training
here.
* Fact: we must equip our teachers with the skills to be good teachers if we
can see that they need help.
* Fact: Statistics tell us that the ex-DET schools are faring the worst in
tests so logic suggests we need to give support there first.
It makes sense for us to group schools with similar profiles together for
training also makes sense for us to provide long training courses. So we will
concentrate on one category at a time but know that we are going to work with
all our schools in turn. Step by step. We must put those plans into practice
and slowly but surely turn our schools around.
Solution two: Work at a systems-level to attend to the problems surrounding
the questions of mother-tongue and learning.
* Fact: research tells us quite clearly that our children have better chances
of educational success if they learn through their mother-tongue for as long as
possible.
* Fact: the system (the WCED) must then make it its business to tell parents
this.
* Fact: the WCED must then help schools to manage this properly.
The WCED is about to announce a new language-in-education transformation
plan. We plan to announce targets to schools.
The first target will be that, wherever possible, learners should have
mother-tongue instruction until the end of Grade six at the earliest. We have
many careful plans to make this happen properly and in stages. It can never
just happen overnight we know that.
Linguists tell us that language and identity are completely intertwined. We
have a number of habits that have developed in our country (and around the
world for that matter) and we understand all the historical influences that
have pushed us into this place. One habit is that people increasingly choose
English as a medium even when their home language is Afrikaans or Xhosa.
We are making our children turn their backs on their own languages: we are
practicing what they call subtractive bilingualism we are simply giving up our
own languages for the perceived or imagined benefits of another one. We must
remember that country has a policy of additive bilingualism or even
multilingualism.
This is target number two: the other part of our transformation plan at
least three years of trilingual for all our learners before the end of the GET
band. We plan to make sure that all three of the languages of the province are
given status.
We are saying that no-one need stop using his or her language. We want to
grow language pride: if others are learning my language then it helps me know
that my language is also valued. My self-esteem grows.
* Fact: In this country we need to keep our own language strong and add more
languages to it. So the WCED plans to encourage firstly bilingualism home
language plus a very strong additional language (English will likely be either
the first or the second one of these two). Secondly, we encourage
trilingual.
I am not going into the details here, ladies and gentlemen. We are still
refining the plans and looking forward to a national language colloquium on 27
July. What I do say though, quite categorically, is that we know that one of
the reasons for poor scores on tests is because learners are not being taught
in their mother-tongue. And what I am saying is that if we know that this is a
problem, then we need to work to fix that problem.
Solution three: Finding collective solutions
During the presidency of Julius Nyerere he promoted a Tanzanian version of
local-based socialism and self-reliance known as 'ujamaa (familyhood)
socialism' organised around co-operative villages. Nyerere's 'ujamaa socialism'
has three main principles: equality and respect for human dignity, sharing of
the resources which are produced by the efforts of all, and work by everyone
and exploitation by none.
This is the crux of the topic chosen for today. I am not going to look into
socialism per se but I want to adapt the idea of family-hood for my argument.
Remember we are looking at hope today, ladies and gentlemen, and solutions. We
are not here to get gloomy. We understand the idea of a long affair.
I want to remind us of that message of cultural historian, Raymond Williams,
quoted by David Halpin, when he said that it is only in a shared belief and
insistence that there are practical alternatives that the balance of forces and
chances begins to alter. Once the inevitabilities are challenged, he says, we
begin gathering our resources for a journey of hope/ reis met hoop / uhambo
lwethemba.
All too often in life we think we are the only ones left stuck with having
to solve terrible problems. I am prepared to bet that we have got lots of that
kind of person here today: people who carry the loads of others; people who
step in time and again to fix things.
Why did I start with Each One Teach One: Together Building a Learning Home
For All /Elkeen Leer Iemand - Saam Bou Ons 'n Leertuiste Vir Almal / Omnye
Ufundisa Omnye - Sakha Kunye Ikhaya Lokufunda Lomntu Wonke?
What do I mean with familyhood in this context?
I want us to work really hard at this third solution. What is a learning
home, after all? How will I know when I have got one? How do I know if I have
not? Could there maybe be such a thing as learning street or a âlearning
communityâ.
How do I know if I have got a learning cape? Or, let us go right back to
your lives: am I sure I have actually even got a learning classroom? I am not
going to try to answer these questions now. I ask you to jot them down and
think quietly about them in the next two days. I will repeat them quickly: What
is a learning home?
How will I know when I have got one? How do I know if I have not? Could
there maybe be such a thing as learning street or a learning community? How do
I know if I have got a learning cape? Am I sure I have got a learning
classroom?
My challenge to all of us on this third solution is simple: find support.
Know that you do not have to provide all the solutions yourself. What are the
literacy levels in your learners' homes? Do their parents read? Can their
parents read? Is there anything to read? Do family members talk to one another?
Do they tell stories? Does the child belong to a library? Read for
pleasure?
The Western Cape Eductaion Department (WCED) plans to do all it can to mobilise
and train people to work in communities on issues of family literacy. Our
teaching assistant project, with 510 people employed to provide extra support
in classrooms, might grow next year, for example, so we add into their
contracts that they need to get out and visit the families of their classes and
help the adults learn to read perhaps. Do your parents know exactly how to help
their children? Have you tried training them to offer good support at home?
The question in my idea of âfamily hoodâ is how big is your literacy family?
How do you grow it? Families typically love and they give to one another: we
need to work out how to surround our learners with loving and knowledgeable
family members. We have community development workers, we have health clinics,
social workers, and student mentors from the tertiary, there are learnerships
and internships.
We have volunteer readers who are ready to get out helping schools. We have
retired teachers and other professionals. We have got local librarians. I
believe we just need to find creative ways to invite these people into our
lives. Ladies and gentlemen, let us mobilise! We have got enough people who are
literate to adopt those who are not literate and help them. We are not the only
solution to our children's problems. Let us have a literacy revolution or a
literacy revival.
To conclude: like it or not language means access, it means jobs, it means
accuracy of communication, it means that you and I together in this room, can
build up a shared vision because we use words to âmake and negotiate meaningâ
to use the specific outcome from curriculum 2005.
I am convinced that we can chalk up a massive literacy breakthrough in this
province if we have faith (that is the partner of hope after all). Maybe the
social capital, the family hood I've been talking about, maybe that is the love
in that famous trilogy. Let us commit to these things today. I am really keen
for us to try to test the power of making pledges.
I am going to end with my MEC pledge made at your conference: I pledge to do
all I can to further this literacy family hood to help set up the conditions
for success at a macro-level.
I wish you a very successful and enriching conference and look forward to
hearing all about it and then seeing the ways that it feeds in to your
classroom practice and your learners' results.
Thank you
Issued by: Department of Education, Western Cape Provincial Government
26 May 2006
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government (http://www.capegateway.gov.za)
