SEKOLO Call to Action
2010
Just over a year ago we came together as concerned South
Africans, committed to public education, to issue a
Call for public
participation in education. Yet as the year passed we saw little progress in
overcoming the challenges facing our education system. Poor South Africans have
placed their hope in education, since the social system, as it exists, seems to
be a dead-end for most people. It remains a fact, though, that our system of
education is in a crisis and is failing our children. If left unaddressed this
will not only undermine any potential for economic and social development, but
also the vibrancy of our democracy.
Despite initiatives, policies and good intentions, we
continue to propagate a two-tiered educational system – one for the children of
the rich, and another for the children of the urban and rural poor. Too many of
our children attend schools that are under-resourced, bleak and fearful places.
Too many of our children still do not have access to education in their mother
tongue, and, shamefully, too many of our children are forced to learn on an
empty stomach. Our scores in literacy, numeracy and our critical thinking
skills show how much the education system continues to reproduce the
characteristics of apartheid education. We cannot continue to lay the blame for
this crisis on educators or learners in poor schools. As a nation we
have not successfully created the conditions
for educational success in these schools --- as a nation we need to come
together and reclaim our responsibility for education.
The
education crisis is the responsibility of the government as well as of all of
us who constitute the public at large. As citizens in a democratic society we
must not abdicate our responsibility of public participation, and further, the
educational crisis is systemic, and too extensive for us to depend on state
interventions alone. While so much public attention is focused on developments
in the political arena,
we seem to have forgotten that the success and
the quality of education depends on the active participation of the broad
public. We sense the groundswell of discontent surrounding education, and a
craving for a more massive, formal and organized way of coming together.
This
is why we re-issue this public Call
to all in South Africa:
concerned citizens - young and old, parents, communities, students, teachers
and other educationalists, academics, NGO’s involved in education, and those
who occupy positions of leadership in society and organizations across the
board, to join us in an effort to ensure that public education is placed at the
top of the national agenda. Because only together can we make a difference by
reclaiming our democratic responsibility and mobilising public participation
around all our educational issues.
First
, we ask all concerned South
Africans, who have not yet done so, to
sign this
Call. Add your
voice and energy to this Call. This will establish a basis for all in South
Africa to come together and strengthen a non-partisan network and educational
movement in 2010.
We
call on
citizens concerned
about education to
mobilize around education and to broaden and deepen
public debate and engagement on educational issues.
We call
on
organizations,
educationalists and all those working in the area of education to
come
together, to share experiences and concerns and, crucially, to find
areas of synergy.
We call
for South Africans to utilise
the energy of 2010 and take a stand for the education we envision for all by
supporting the
1GOAL: Education for ALL campaign.
We
are engaged in weaving together a network; a coalition of individuals,
communities and organizations, across differences, to come together around
education, and to advocate and campaign for education more effectively than we
are able to do individually. To achieve the education that we desire for all in
South Africa and to actualize the liberating future we held up to our youth and
our people in 1994 we need to magnify our voices and our energies around the
project of education. In light of this we are striving to bring the network
together for a
national conference in
2010. The purpose of this
conference is to mobilize around the project of education, to share our
experiences in education, find areas of synergy, and to determine strategies
for the network.
Below
are some of the concerns and areas which we have been thinking around, and
around which we feel some tangible actions can be taken. However as the network
grows and aligns, and our voices and energies come together other issues will
emerge around which actions will be taken:
-
The support of
literacy in South
Africa through the nurturing of a
reading culture; for books to be
made affordable for all in South Africa and not a privileged few, and for
the establishment and support of
libraries and
reading groups
in communities throughout South Africa.
-
The immediate implementation of a
corruption-free,
compulsory school nutrition scheme accountable to communities, so that
even the poorest child is given the necessary nutrition and chance to
attend school on a full stomach.
-
The establishment of
an independent
National Commission focused on education, particularly in rural and
urban poor communities.
The
Commission must be tasked with undertaking open, public and transparent
discussions, with particular emphasis on hearing the experiences and
analyses of the poor, and avoiding the ‘expert’ and ‘consultancy’ driven
model that has framed policy debates in the past, and has so often muffled
the public’s voice. The goal of the Commission would be to produce a well
considered and realistic programme for the radical transformation of the
education system as a whole, and in particular, to address the educational
needs of the poorest urban and rural communities.
2010
is an exciting and momentous year for South Africa where we have the
opportunity to show the world how far we have come. But we must not allow the
events of 2010 to shift our focus from how far we still need to go, and we must
not lose sight of the urgency of the struggle for a quality education for all
in South Africa. Rather, with the world’s focus on us, we need to use this
opportunity as a nation to come together and remobilize around and take a
collective stand for the
education we want for our children and other
members of our society equally in need of educational development. It is only
if we have the courage to do this that we can build the kind of South Africa
for which we have fought so long, and for which we continue to struggle.