Stop teaching our kids to be violent

One of the most profound things Nelson Mandela said was: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

That quote has a particular resonance in this country today, as our children get into the first term of the year at primary and secondary schools and as our first-year university hopefuls still battle to find places in the tertiary education system. Mandela would have been horrified to see that, while education is a powerful weapon, there are those with weapons – be it petrol bombs, burning tyres or batons – facing off across the no man’s land of race.

That is what is happening at Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeniging, following a court judgment which put a stop to the Gauteng department of education’s attempt to force 55 English-speaking pupils into the Afrikaans-medium school.

While there is undoubtedly truth in the accusation that language and culture are often used in this country to perpetuate the race politics of exclusion, there is also the reality that MEC Panyaza Lesufi and his officials have pursued the anti-racism crusade with a fanaticism, which includes playing fast and loose with justice.

In the end, it is the children who suffer. They are traumatised by the sight of pitched battles outside the school gates.

In other areas, too, children are mere numbers and pawns, as in the west of Johannesburg where, as we report today, a brand-new R97 million school – the pet project of Lesufi – sits just kilometres away from a rundown, dingy and unsafe collection of buildings purporting to be a school.

Our educational battles are increasingly being settled in court, or with protests in the streets … and the only sort of education our children are getting from this is that the best way to sort out a problem is with violence. We need to stop this madness.

//

For more news your way, follow The Citizen on Facebook and Twitter.