EDITOR – It was quiet appalling for me as I drove up Ridley Park Road, I stopped at the robots and had plenty of time to scrutinize the two huge billboards in front of me. They advertise two pre-primary schools and to my surprise, they were not multi-racial. Not one Indian, Black or Coloured child was on the advert of the White owned school and not one White, Black or Coloured child on the Indian owned school advert. 20 years into the democracy, what are we propagating to these children? A picture says a thousand words.
Cole Pillay,
Malvern
The schools respond
“At that point, ( when the photo was taken) we only had Indian children enrolled at the school. We did not exclude any race, it is just that no other children were available then. There was no intention behind it and there still isn’t. If anything, we at the school have had cases where children were taken out because parents thought their children would pick up an Indian accent. With that said, we are a multi-racial school and we welcome children of all races, as it is we have other races besides Indian children. Our aim is to give our children the best education and our children do very well when they start school. Changing that billboard now would be very costly and we don’t have a budget for it right now,” said Principal of Jumpstart Montesorri, Sally Pillay.
The owner and principal of The John Thomas Education Care Centre, Brenda Lynch said, “there was no racism involved.”
