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Professor Jonathan Jansen
The numbers do
not look good. For the approximately 10 million youth in the age bracket 15-25 years,
every indicator from health, to education, to employment looks miserable. HIV prevalence
stands at 10.3% for young men and 16.9% for young women in the same age group. Less
than half the birth cohort that started in Grade 1 eventually reaches Grade 12.
Only about 15% of Grade 12 students pass well enough to enter university. Seven
in every ten (or 70%) young people (ages 15-34) remain unemployed, rising
sharply to 84% in the case of African females. Yet it is in education that the
picture is particularly bleak.
While South Africa
rightly claims very high participation rates in especially primary school education
(more than 90%), this indicator of the numbers showing up for school conceals
some major problems inside institutions. The most serious challenge is the
quality of education, meaning that while more and more children show up in the
attendance statistics, the standard of teaching is very poor and the
achievements in learning very dismal. One study after another has shown that
South African teachers lack both the content knowledge required for effective
teaching as well as the pedagogical or teaching skills demanded to advance
effective learning. The problem becomes worse in the higher grades where
content knowledge is a crucial factor in the teaching of, say, mathematics on
the higher grade.
The effects on
youth are devastating as both national (such as the annual matriculation
examinations) and provincial tests (such as the Grade 4 and 6 numeracy and
literacy tests in the Western Cape) show not only a stagnation in learning
performance among young people, but in some cases, actually regression in learning
achievements in the poorer provinces. These trends are confirmed by any number
of international tests of achievements (such as the International Mathematics
and Science Studies) over the past decade that show South Africa performing
dismally among youth achievements in learning is concerned, even when compared
to poorer neighbours in struggling third world economies.
It should not
surprise, therefore, that large numbers of schoolchildren actually drop-out of
as a result of the failure of schools to successfully engage young minds (push
out factors) as well as the effects of poverty that draw students out of school
as they try to eke out a living on the streets (pull out factors). The drop-out statistics is particularly
alarming for young boys, as evidenced in the fact that South Africa is one of the few
countries in the developing world where there are more girls in high school
than boys.
If youth simply
drop out of school, that would be bad enough. But teenagers drop into
anti-social activities that in part explain the wave of crime sweeping the
country. Pushed out of school and lured by gangs, young men in particular enter
the cycle of petty violence, incarceration and more dangerous violence which
often ends their lives prematurely. What this means, even if argued only on the
basis of self-interest, is that we have to find ways of making schools not only
places of high enrolment but also sites of high quality. It does not require
profound sociological insight to recognise that a poor schooling system threatens
all of us.
This threat
expresses itself in a strong predatory culture among our youth who that could
collapse this fragile spider web of relationships that sociologists call social cohesion. The red flags were
waved as far back as the early 1990s when one report after another warned about
“a lost generation” of youth who threatened to be foisted on a young democracy.
Well, we failed to act and now that “lost generation” has seen its ranks swell
by more and more disaffected youth dropping out of school. These predators,
marauding youth, move quietly and viciously through homes and businesses where
every year even the official statistics show massive leaps in the incidence of
armed robbery.
The problem
does not resolve itself for those youth who run the gauntlet of state schooling
and qualify to write the matriculation examination at the end of Grade 12. In
fact, the single most pressing problem facing all South African universities
right now is the high drop-out rate among undergraduate students. This problem
obviously affects the poorer, rural universities to a greater extent than the
well-resourced, urban institutions. Still, it is a major problem. The roots of
the problem of course lie in the school system for there is evidence that
passing Grade 12, even with a university level pass (called matriculation
exemption), is not a strong predictor of whether a student will pass and
achieve her university degree on time. What makes the problem worse is that
several universities, and especially those called universities of technology,
waive the “exemption” requirement and take in—for purposes of increasing the
state subsidy–even weaker students who then fail in droves once inside the
university. The costs of this inefficiency, university dropouts, to the
student, the institution and the country are incalculable.
One scheme to
accommodate youth after the compulsory phase of schooling (Grades 1 through 9)
was the Further Education and Training
Colleges, an invention
that recognised, in effect, that the school system did not have the capacity to
ensure 12 years of formal schooling for all children. These FET Colleges
therefore was a social safety net for children whom the schools had failed but
where youth could pursue vocational and training courses as an alternative. The
second class status of these new institutions is reflected in, and maintained
by, the lack of sufficient levels of investment in the kind of technological
infrastructure and optimally qualified staff necessary to transform FET
colleges into high-powered engines for the delivery of advanced technical
skills.
So not only do
we fail to provide all our youth with a strong school education, we prepare
them poorly for higher education. The nett result is that millions of young
people who are semi-literate and desperate trawl the streets of South Africa
exhibiting high degrees of frustration.
Enter low-level private education options in the form of sometimes
dubious colleges offering all kinds of diplomas and certificates from office
management to secretarial skills to computer literacy. Thankfully, some of the
worst kinds of cheap, private colleges have been regulated out of existence but
still, students who cannot enter or remain in schools or higher education often
see these low-level skill options as the only available fall-back position. The
problem is that in a country with a rapidly growing economy, a modern
infrastructure and a burgeoning technological sector, such low-level skills
have very little exchange value in the market place. The options left are
unemployment or the bottom of the service industry where fast food chains and
supermarket tills absorb such unfulfilled talent.
It is of course
the case that in any capitalist society, young people slot into these different
levels of economic opportunity based on their levels of education and training.
The problem in South Africa
is the disproportionate number of young people at the bottom-end of the
education and employment chain compared to other middle level economies. For
example, South Africa
has one of the lowest participation rates in higher education in the region.
What further
reduces the numbers of students within higher education, even among those who
succeed, is the high rate of HIV infection. It is not uncommon on university campuses
for visible numbers of students to die every year since the early to middle 20s
reflect the period when, untreated, the disease starts to show-up from the
sexually active teenage years. The social, economic and educational impact of
HIV/AIDS on this future talent pool of young people in universities has been
measured through any number of studies—and they all carry the same message of
serious consequences for society.
One of the more
interesting trends with respect to youth development in South Africa is
the unexpected turns in the gendered character of society. Girls tend to stay
in school longer and every indicator suggests that girls are also more and more
successful in higher education. From the perspective of education and gender
equity, South Africa
does very well compared to other developing nations. Yet this statistic is as
much a result of boys dropping out than it is of girls staying in school. This
positive picture, from the perspective of young women, changes dramatically
when it comes to their health vulnerability. For example, young women in the
age group 15-24 are eight times higher HIV incidence than males in the same
category. To put this bluntly, while women stay in education longer, they also
die more often.
There is yet
another problem impacting on youth and development in South Africa, especially among white and middle
class young people, and that is the growing number of youth leaving South Africa
on achieving their school or university qualifications. These are often highly
talented individuals trained at the best institutions in the country, who then
leave as part of a general brain drain. As is now well-established, the main
reason for this outflow of talent and skill is the serious crime situation
across South Africa
and the increasing feelings of vulnerability among the middle classes. The loss
of this youth talent pool is, again, devastating for the national economy. Not
all middle class young people do or can flee, however; many remain.
Perhaps one of
the most pernicious aspects of youth life in South Africa after 1994 has been
the dramatic evidence of white racism sprouting again through the second
generation i.e. those white youth who grew-up and gained their social
consciousness after apartheid. In the past three years from the Waterkloof
(Pretoria, Gauteng) Four who kicked a black man to death; to the Reitz students
at the University of the Free State (Bloemfontein, Free State) who humiliated
black and mainly women staff on video; to Johan Nel the eighteen year-old who
shot up a squatter camp outside Swartruggens (North West)—all of these, and
other, events suggest an anger among white youth who came into South Africa
with the racial knowledge but without the racial knowledge of the past. It is
not only that the education system has not taken account of the bitter
knowledge of these angry, young white males; it is also that they experience
the labour market as marginalizing them on grounds of what these young men
perceive as the consequences of employment equity.
Obviously not
all white youth descend into this kind of violent, racist behaviour but the
seeds of disaffection have clearly been sown among a growing class of alienated,
post-apartheid, young adults. This is reflected in the flourish of songs of
lament such as Nie Langer (No Longer)
by the rock band Klopjag in which white youth sing lustily that they will no
longer apologise for anything that whites might have done wrong under
apartheid; or in songs of salvation such as Bok van Blerk’s DE LA REY which longs for the Boer War
general, Koos de lay Rey, to come and lead the “boere” from their dismal
situation.
The racial
flip-side of these angry, white and mainly Afrikaner young men, are the angry,
black and mainly politically aligned black youth who populate structures such
as the ANC Youth League. Here a potent and coarse discourse of disgust and
threat aimed at political enemies begin to occupy the songs, speeches and
writing of uncouth leaders and followers alike. The ANC Youth League Congress
of 2008 in the Free State
was a turning point in the history of a once-proud body that produced the likes
of Nelson Mandela. Now, corrupt youth leaders caught up in all kinds of
byzantine money schemes, on the one hand, and thrust to the forefront of the
defence of their preferred candidate for President, Mr Jacob Zuma, begin for
the first time since 1994 to take centre stage in South African politics.
The prognosis
over the long term looks precarious. The culture of schooling is so dismal that
it would take a radical transformation of teaching, learning and management in
schools to alter poor performance. Schools do not only fail to offer quality
education, they are in fact part of the violent culture that infuses the
surrounding communities. And as some studies have shown, schools are also
predatory environments for dangerous sexual behaviour that had some researchers
conclude that girls were more likely to remain HIV negative if they stayed away
from school rather than attend classes. And unless the school system, that
foundation of everything else that follows, is mended, our democracy itself is
threatened.
There is
certainly no shortage of structures, policies and plans to rescue youth.
National bursary schemes have been instituted to fund poor students to attend
university, but with results so weak because of low-quality schooling, the
funding cannot correct for this. Internships and apprenticeships have been made
possible, on paper, through Sector Education and Training Authorities, but with
the legendary failures of these bureaucratic monstrosities called SETAs, far
too few youth find it possible to access these funds and work-as-you-learn
opportunities for these state structures to make any marked difference among
the youth. National youth policies signal all kinds of areas for intervention
and priorities for development, but like so much of government policy
platforms, serve largely as political symbols of what is worth achieving than concrete,
funded planning mandates for how to get there.
The same
criticism applies to nominal attempts to get youth into productive employment
through initiatives such as “expanded” public works programmes and national
youth service. As already indicated, the organized political structures for
youth—such as the ANC and Communist Party Youth Leagues, on the left, and the
Freedom Front Plus on the right—are themselves victims of the politics of
degradation and disgust that they can offer no leadership on the concrete
developmental challenges outlined in this paper. And then, of course, there are
the chronically under-funded structures, such as the Joint Enrichment Project,
which promise much in terms of youth development but their scale and impact is
so limited that they hardly make a dent in the face of the enormous problems
facing youth.
So what is to
be done? There can be no question that a large part of the puzzle of solving
the problem of youth and their futures lies in rebuilding the education system.
This means ensuring that from Grade 1 onwards every poor child has access to
nutrition through a less corrupt school feeding scheme. It means that every
child is taught everyday in every class by a present teacher. It means that
every child lives within accessible distance from the local school. It means
that children study without the burden of school fees. It means that parents or
guardians are intimately involved in the educational lives of their children.
It means that male teachers become more visible role models to young boys. It
means that schools extend the curriculum into a more vibrant and meaningful
extracurricular programme that includes sports, arts and culture. It means
returning to schools a strong counselling and career advisory service that
makes options in and out of school explicit to the youth. It means children
learning the basics of reading, writing and calculating rather than a complex
curriculum out of place in the third world. In short, what should be on offer
is a solid education that lays the foundation for a vibrant and productive
youth to emerge in South
Africa.
Sources
CASE
(2000). Youth 2000: A Study of Youth in South Africa. Research for the
Royal Netherlands
Embassy
Ministry
of Education (2007). Progress Report to the Minister of Education, Ministerial
Committee on Learner Retention in the South African Schooling System, October.
Department of Education, Pretoria
Pelser,
Eric (2008). Learning to be Lost: Youth crime in South Africa. Discussion paper for
the HSRC Youth Policy Initiative, Reserve Bank, Pretoria, 13 May
Umsobomvu
Youth Fund (2005). The Status of Youth Report. Research by the Human Sciences
Research Council
Wolpe
Trust (2006). Youth Unemployment and Education in South Africa
www.wolpetrust.org.za/dialogue2006/CT022006_transcript.pdf
World
Bank (2007). World Development Report 2007: Development and the next
generation. Washington D.C., USA
November 3, 2008
Education