The South African School System & Volunteering Week 5

This morning, as part of our CSL 100 class, or our "volunteering class" while we're here in South Africa, we had a compulsory workshop, where were learned about the South African education system.  Just from being here and living in the South African society and especially from volunteering in the townships, we have seen first hand just how unequal and broken the education systems are here-yet-today, we learned about them in a more in-depth way.  Most wealthy families, naturally, send their kids to private schools and on the other end of the spectrum, those that cannot afford private education (usually those living in townships) go to government funded schools.  Just to give you an idea of the difference in these schools, I was told my one of my friends that lives here in South Africa, that for one of the nicest private schools in Port Elizabeth, an all boy's school called Grey Junior School, their parents pay R28,000 a year, so about $3,000 a year!  On the other hand, at a township school, parents would pay about R4000 a year, or about $500 a year IF they can find a way to afford it, which, unfortunately, most cannot.  Obviously, the gap there is enormous! Another thing that struck me, is that, according to the professor who gave the lecture, (which is a pretty good source of information, in my opinion) told us that there are no rules, regulations or set of criteria set for the ways in which government money are dispersed to all the different schools in South Africa.  So, for example, in the states, there are certain criteria set up for what schools qualify for certain level of funding, usually based on test scores and how many students one school carries.  Here however, there is nothing like that, absolutely nothing- which explains a HUGE part of the problem! At points, it was very frustrating to sit and listen to this lecture, because the cycle of poverty, here in South Africa, and all over the world is so hard to break out of and change.  For example, a nation that struggles with education also struggles with poverty.  A nation has poverty because of weak educational systems, people become uneducated and thus, cannot get a job.  People cannot change this cycle, because they cannot afford to send their children to school, thus, they too grow up uneducated and unemployed.  The cycle keeps going and going and its nearly impossible to break free of it.  So frustrating, hard to understand and hard to solve.

This week while volunteering at Sinethemba Homework Club/Children's Home, especially after the morning's lecture I felt extra helpless while trying to help the kids with their homework.  Two younger boys, in grade two came to me for help on their spelling.  They had ten words, such as "where," "what," "do," "their," "she," and "he."  I was very hopeful at first, because they had written these words down in their spelling notebooks in really neat, careful handwriting, so I thought maybe they were doing well with their spelling.  However, once I tested them on the words it became clear they honestly had no idea what any of the letters or words for that matter meant, despite how to spell them.  Neither of the boys knew any of the letters in any of the words except for the letter "e."  They honestly did not know the alphabet or how to depict one letter from another.  So, we spent over an hour, going through each word, letter by letter, sounding out the letters and saying the words.  I got the feeling that the boys never got one on one attention because when I asked them questions and gave them individual attention they seemed shocked by it.  You could almost tell they were starved for attention.  I had each of the boys write each word ten times.  I have no idea if this is the "right way" to learn how to spell, because Im not an education major, but I do know that muscle memory has a lot to do with it, and the more times they write the letters in that particular word, the more it might stick with them, right?  Thats how I learned to spell at least, and thats the best way I knew how to teach them.  By the end of the time at the homework club, both boys were beginning to start identifying certain words and they could both actually say the words aloud, which was a HUGE improvement.  It made me laugh at one point, because when I was trying to explain the words "she" and "he" in simple terms, I told them- "She would be the same as saying "sisi" (the Xhosa word for "she) and "he" would be the same as saying "bhuti" (the Xhosa word for boy).  They found it not only shocking that I knew Xhosa, but the fact that I had just related something to their language.  We all laughed about it, but overall, I hope it helped them understand.  

Each week when I leave Sinethemba, I try to stay positive, thinking that I really may have made a difference, and I honestly hope that I have...but then reality creeps in, and I find myself thinking-did I really make a difference?  Will it really matter if that boy or girl knows how to spell "their?"  Will it actually make a difference in the grand scheme of things?  Its depressing, but true.  From every thing I have learned about the South African education system, teaching one boy how to spell "their" probably wont have an impact.  Maybe I'm being too much of a realist, or maybe I've just realized that sometimes tiny acts of kindness really do get lost in the shuffle of things.  One thing is for certain: Sinethemba has really opened my eyes to see what education systems are really like in countries outside the United States and no matter what the outcome, I'm glad to have this experience