South Africa now has the worst maths and science education in the world. That’s according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) latest Global Information Technology Report, which places us stone last, in 148th place out of 148 countries*. Even perennial basket cases like Haiti score higher marks than South Africa.
It’s fair to say, therefore, that in 20 years, the ANC government has achieved the objectives of Bantu Education far more effectively and thoroughly than apartheid’s architect Hendrik Verwoerd could ever have dreamed. A vast number of our citizens have been left with an education that fits them to be nothing more than ‘hewers of wood’ and ‘drawers of water’. They certainly have no chance of competing in any kind of modern economy.
Not that this finding by the WEF delivers anything we don’t already know. The government itself has admitted the severity of the problem, although it seems incapable of doing anything about it.
The consequences are severe.
In a world that is increasingly networked, maths and science are the cornerstones on which nations build the foundations of a prosperous future. Technological advancement, sound business practices, even the basic accounting that sits at the heart of good governance, all require an ability to deal with numbers.
Nor is this criticism of the ANC’s performance any form of veiled racism. I spend one week a month in Johannesburg at GIBS, arguably South Africa’s leading business school. There I meet bright, well-educated, young black students who are smart, numerate and very definitely going places. Almost all have been through the private school system, and avoided the morass of government education. These youngsters are exactly what the new South Africa should look like and we need tens of thousands more, just like them.
To be condemned to a poor education is to be thrown into a form of slavery. In the modern world, a poor education is one that does not include a decent level of maths and science.
But here’s the rub.
If I were a politician, and had destroyed your future by failing to improve the education system, and by allowing you and your siblings to emerge unfit for anything more than manual labour, you would surely throw me from office at the earliest possible opportunity. Wouldn’t you? I know I would and I’d hope the office was on the top floor of a very high building!
However, in the recent election, voters in their droves returned the ANC to power. The same ANC that has one of the highest education budgets in the world and, according to the WEF, does the least with it. The same ANC that reduced the pass mark in certain exams to 30%. The same ANC that appears so slavishly beholden to a teachers’ union that refuses any kind of performance monitoring of its members.
It’s absolutely baffling.
So when my former colleagues at Primedia’s Eyewitness News backed down to the ANC over a cartoon that described voters as ‘poephols’, I have to say that I disagree with that decision. Any electorate that happily re-elects a group of politicians that has systematically destroyed its future by wrecking any chance of a decent education deserves every ounce of opprobrium heaped upon it.
If South Africa is to have any chance at all of even a moderate increase in future prosperity, education must become the nation’s top priority. Not one of a range of important things, or a Top Ten “Must Do” list, but the absolute, stand-alone essential. To vote any other way is to become a turkey that has just voted for Christmas; you are signing the warrant for your own extinction.
Which is a polite way of saying “Poephols? You bet….”
*NOTE: I see that the Department of Basic Education has rejected the WEF report, saying that it “is not a credible or accurate reflection of the state of education in South Africa…and is based purely on the opinions or perceptions of selected executives.” If the research methodology is flawed, I assume that we will, therefore, be rejecting similar WEF reports which rate the JSE as the best in the world – 1st out of 148, as well as our 1st place rankings for strength of auditing and reporting standard, along with our global 2nd place for financing through the local equity market? To say nothing of the ranking of our business schools – 13th best in the world, and just two places behind the USA? After all, these too are just “the opinions or perceptions of selected executives”.