Healing Apathy

Lots of initiatives and programmes are embarked on in an attempt to reignite and instil sense of urgency, responsibility and discipline in our learners or teenagers. Motivational speakers and affluent people in designer suits are a common feature during most assembly days at various schools; this in a quest to make learners want to learn and be self-motivated. After which they all hibernate to their posh or palatial houses in enclosed boom-gate areas. By and large, children are inspired by substance and their immediate environment.

Our learners don't aspire to be educated or be known as top achievers, because their immediate environment - educators - are a depressed lot. Educators and graduates with assorted qualifications lead mediocre lives. "Kings and Queens of Bling" or "Self-made millionaires", who hardly made it to the tenth Grade, in townships are what they aspire to be like, materialism is more valued than an honest day's work. Opening up a corner, carwashing, and taxi driving seem to have become ideal career destinations. "Thug life" is fashionable and people like criminal William "King of Bling" Mbatha and opportunist like Khanyi "Queen of Bling" Mbau are held in high esteem or on pedestals and usually demonstrate luminous benefits of scavenging. Rappers have to brag about being shot several times or having shot somebody for them to be idolized. Less is known about Mathematics wizards like Loyiso Nongxa (Vice-chancellor at Wits) and the deceased Professor Thamsanqa Nkambule, because no one wants to emulate them.

I earnestly think that adequate recodnition and remuneration of educators can positively impact on our learners' desire to learn and aspire to be like their mentors - i.e. educators. Imagine a situation where educators drive decent cars like Q7's, X5's, R8's, M3/5/6's parked in the school premise, live in posh houses while they are not suffocating in debt, and can afford a decent meal other than the same bunny chow or "kota" that they also devour during lunch. Won't our learners aspire to be like them and see that it is rewarding to go to school or be educated? When you buy a decent house and register in a well resourced school, you have to go on pension before you buy a second hand car, a professional nogal. I can suddenly hear somebody repeating an old adage: Teaching is a Calling or a Noble Profession! Forgetting that Calling or Nobility doesn't pay bills. Eskom wants another elctricity hike, petrol is continuously up, food is agonizingly expensive, the property market is leaving public servants to apply for low cost houses, and education is gradually becoming out of reach. We can moralize for all we like and clatter about how materialistic our learners are, the fact is that we are living in a substance or material world.

Paying educators well is directly proportional to provision of quality education, which learners will eagerly anticipate and acquire to emulate their mentors...