SA needs entrepreneurial change makers
Academic achievement accounts for only 15% of the skills needed in adult life. Creating an education system that builds independence and responsiveness in children should be a national priority, says VIVIENNE SCHULZ, who has been empowering disadvantaged communities in entrepreneurship since 1999
IN the midst of a variety of national crises around corruption, unemployment and inequality, South Africa cannot afford to keep churning out matriculants who have been taught to sit still, listen and copy information, regardless of the pass rate.
Our nation is in desperate need of self-starting, entrepreneurial change makers.
But, instead, research shows that barely 14.6% of our workforce is able to respond well and independently to life challenges.
The rest, unfortunately, are more or less waiting for somebody to bail them out and solve their problems for them.
This is a hard thing to say, but it is unfortunately true: The way our school system functions produces workers with dependent mindsets. And this is exactly what our nation does not need right now.
Indeed, matric results have very little to do with competency and employability and do not determine whether a person will have success or failure in their adult life. While I appreciate the importance of academics, it is overrated.
For a human to ably respond to life, work, love, child-rearing and everything else it takes to be an adult, requires high competency levels. Unfortunately only 15% of this competency, research shows, is shaped by academics and information.
The remaining 85% of our responsiveness is determined by our volition, which is that spark in our soul that gets our willpower into action.
What does it help, then, to undergo 12 years of schooling in an antiquated education system, only to produce dependent-minded humans?
Our children’s greatest educational need is to develop their occupational intelligence – their ability to use a whole-brain approach to solving challenges life throws at them
Let’s get real and be honest. The workplace does not need one more person who has an oblivious sense of entitlement and low responsiveness to challenges
Is our State ready for another 400 000 young adults who will be looking to government or employers to solve the crises we are facing?
Our school system should be producing young adults who are the self-driven, go-getter, self-starting kind; young people who solve problems and make hard decisions.
Teachers need to become provocateurs of volition, not transfer agents of knowledge that use rewards and punishments (external motivators) to get children to move.
