Integrating Prof Jansen's theory

It does not get more dangerous than when a failed engineer takes on a professor of education on the professor's views about education. A few disclaimers are called for at this stage. I am fond of the good professor, not of him really because I don't know the man like that, but of his writing and views on education and other social issues. This post, I hope, will reflect the respect and fondness I have for the prof, his writing, his views. As in maths I hope to integrate the good prof's views where the limit of his view tends to zero (that is at least my recollection of the integration formula) - something like lim x=0. Where x is the prof's views.

The good prof recently wrote in The Times newspaper that we ought to be cautious when we integrate children from different races and culture into one school - a school that in typical South African style, was previously white. He argues that children coming from different backgrounds respond differently to education and to discipline, etc. This far I do not take issue with Prof. Jansen's views. Strangely, this being his conclusion, I may be mistaken to be agreeing with the whole article, which I don't. It is how the good prof builds his argument that his conclusion belies his thoughts.

According to Prof. Jansen, the schools that stand to suffer the most from ill-considered integration, are the poor Afrikaners' schools. These schools he opines, although poor, are functional and produce the goods - presumably through discipline and hard work. There is something in the sub-text that suggested to me that the discipline and good performance of these school is almost genetic as much as it is in the nature of the Afrikaner. This of course concerned me somewhat. There are of course well-run poor, primarily Afrikaner schools, I am sure of that. This to me is more a testimony to the management of the school and the parents maybe but definitely not the nature of the children. Children I have learned are just that - and their conduct is in the majority of instances the explanation why certain species eat their young.

Prof. Jansen then continues to say that integrating black children from poor black township schools into these Afrikaner schools is a bad idea. This, after he stated that by default, the poor Afrikaner schools attract children from these very poor black schools (rich blacks are already in posh schools and the almost rich don't go to the poor Afrikaner schools). He then says that children from the dysfunctional poor black schools do not respond well or positively to discipline that is imposed by the Afrikaner school that they are now being integrated into. Fights break out on the playground, in the toilets; knives appear at school; drugs and other ills, which appear to come to the hitherto well-run Afrikaner school concealed in the backpacks of the black children. In the end the school suffers the most. This is so because at the first sight of the knives or the throw of the first punch, the Afrikaner parents yank their children out this previously well-run school and the previously white school soon becomes a poor black and dysfunctional school. This is so notwhithstanding that the teachers do not follow the white children in exodus. Apparently not only do the children not respond to discipline, the teaching staff cannot bring this lot to heel.

As indicated at the beginning of this post, I may well have misread the good prof but I doubt it. With respect Prof. I believe that you overstated the goodness of the poor Afrikaner kids and the badness of the black children from dysfunctional school. The casualness with which his article is written (quite uncharacteristic of him I must say) condemns the black children and not the poorly-run schools that they come from. This is not about the children, it is about those with authority over them. It is in my view an unfair and glib assertion that the poor children bring all manner of ills to their new school.

There are enough reports Prof. that suggest at least to me that the children, white and black, are thrust into racially charged environment, which the adults do nothing to defuse but infact make it worse. You will remember the Huhudi (Vryburg Prof) incident. The parents, teachers and unemployed officious bystanders all behaved poorly - they made what was already a difficult situation worse. They were all of them, worse than the poor kids at that poor school.

The difficulties the prof raise in his article are real and need to be addressed. They are however not problems of integrating unruly black children from dysfunctional schools into the poor well-run Afrikaner schools. They are about those who are in charge of our children's education taking their jobs seriously and jealously protecting our children's right to learn.

In this instance Prof. I'm afraid there are no problem children, just problem adults.