I have a soft spot for broadcast programmes like CCFM and Radio Islam because they bring a spiritual dimension to complex questions in education. Towards the end of an interview with CCFM last week, one final audience question came through to me as the guest: “Where do I enrol my child when the schools all say they are full?”
My instincts told me that this question required more context for a helpful answer and so I asked the host to give that mother my cellphone number so that she could call me. The distraught mother had no airtime but managed a WhatsApp message for me to call her back. That was when the drama started.
The mother moves around, sleeping wherever she can find a couch for the night. The father was felled by a motorbike accident. After some probing questions, I discover that the boy has been in rehabilitation (dagga, “not him, his friends”) and his academic rap sheet is not that great (“it’s actually much better now”). The mother sends me a picture of a beautiful, wholesome boy. Out of school.
Then the next phone call came. This boy’s father is in prison. The mother “flits in and out of his life” and, with each of her rare visits, leaves the boy in emotional distress. This is the grandmother speaking who raises the child while holding down more than one job to keep the wolf from the door.
The grandmother needs him in a school closer to home because the one many kilometres away no longer offers after-school care which she relied on while finishing work nearby. Can I please talk to the schools nearer to home to allow the boy to enrol?
By now I knew which questions to ask. Does the boy have an excellent academic record? He does not. Does he have a record of exemplary behaviour? No. Can you afford the fees? No, but I will use the exemption application option for poorer parents.
With a heavy heart, I had to tell the two women the truth. Your child is not going to get into any of your ideal schools — especially if you are on a long waiting list. Schools have a way of finding out. A simple telephone call to the previous principal will reveal the truth about destructive behaviour. A mere glance at a report card of a struggling child will keep you on a pretend waiting list till kingdom come.
And schools keep their exemption applications to a bare minimum because of the significant difference between the fees charged and the subsidy paid out by the department. With too many “exemption students”, a school’s finances will tank.
Schools prefer “normal” (preferably heterosexual, not-divorced) parents who will pay the fees, and “normal” children who will pass their grades and stay out of trouble. The ideal child brings something to the school — he or she is a top hockey player or adds the status of a father who is a doctor or a wealthy businessman (yep, they still tend to be men). Most South African schools care about as much about equity and diversity as the farcical television show, Love Island SA. It only matters when somebody makes a fuss.
All of which raises the question: where do broken children go to school? It is a question that kept me awake this past week. I felt that I had let down the parents by not having ready alternatives for them to pursue.
Everything I know about children and learning has long convinced me that if these two boys were given a solid education in a positive school environment surrounded by caring adults and appropriate services, there is a good chance they will flourish. But that means a different kind of school, not one that caters only for the privileged. It also requires a different kind of society, not one that celebrates only those who came through an unequal school system with seven or more distinctions at the end of grade 12.
The ugly truth is that without a good school to go to, it is more than likely that these two boys (and thousands like them) will end up on the streets, in the prison system, and dead long before their time. They will wreak havoc on the lives of the poor and the privileged alike.
But because we are so selfish and shortsighted, we have come to believe that taking care of our own is enough for living the good life in SA. None of us is safe until every child is safe, secure, and in a good school.