Roll your eyes and say ‘Go figure’?

“You do want me to pass, don’t you?”

That’s an ambush question like “Does your father still beat your mother?”  Say ‘Yes’ … say ‘No’…  you could be admitting dark family secrets.  Best answer?  “At what?”

The passing question came to me when I refused just before Valedictory in October 2012 to accept a Grade 12 learner’s project that had been due in March. 

In the US they have an expression accompanied by rolling of the eyes:  “Go figure!”  It suggests that whatever has prompted the frustrated rolling of the eyes is something incomprehensible. And crazy.

But let’s take up the challenge: What is the thinking behind the question in the context:  “You do want me to pass, don’t you?”

As a start, it suggests that my Grade 12 learner understood the teamwork and collaboration required between him and me for his success.

He also understood that handing in the project was essential to passing, and that his passing was desirable.

So why did he not hand in when he should have?  Myriad reasons are possible. Socio-economic. Psycho-social. Parental. Societal. Pedagogical. Maybe also that he knew I’d have it on my conscience if I didn’t.  Or maybe he knew that a WCED official would say “Go figure!” about me and force acceptance.  Maybe all of the above!

The buck stops with the teacher.  “If it has not been learned, it has not been taught.”  A colleague whose school in Khayelitsha offers a narrow Maths & Science curriculum like ours at Oude Molen has the following motto: “No excuses, just results”.

So what is the figuring that one has to do?  Education thinkers like Proff. Brian O’Connell (UWC), Jonathan Jansen (UFS), Crain Soudien (UCT) and others have focused our attention on the difference between the 1976 generation and the current cohort.  In 1976 the youngsters took to the streets to demand high quality education. Now far too many of the current cohort seem to have no sense of agency nor urgency to make the effort for their own success. 

Instead, a sense of entitlement seems to have been born from the expectation that matric pass rate will continue to rise whether or not there are teacher strikes, service delivery riots, widespread indiscipline and significant numbers of unprepared, unprofessional ’educators’ whose example is that you get a government job and then relax in expectation of payday. “You can’t get me, I’m part of the union”.

So if a sense of personal agency has not been learned, i.e. the understanding that you have to make an effort if you want to change your circumstances, then, yes, I have not successfully taught it.

Did the young man pass?  Yes, he did.  He’s working now. Predictably, he took seriously his supervisor’s warning about meeting deadlines.

Aware that the pedagogical explanation for this is the uneven developmental rate of humans, I am still considering different strategies to engage youngsters more effectively.  I suppose that’s it:  No excuses, just results.

Written by:

Tony Marshall, Headmaster of Oude Molen Academy of Science and Technology.