Crisis of Teaching
Posted by Ingrid Thomson | 12 Oct, 2007"The majority of public schools in our country can be regarded as sites of a moral panic that highlights criminality, vandalism, bullying and violence, as well as “drop-out” and academic failure.
Middle-class kids experience an education that is largely unchanged in terms of quality and resources from pre-1994 practices, but there is evidence that working-class and poor kids, who attend public schools in the township and rural areas of South Africa, are increasingly alienated and disaffected." So writes Peter Kallaway in The Teacher.
He goes on to say that most teachers are "confused and angry because they are being asked to do the impossible" - to take the blame for the non-delivery of a quality mass education system and to do this for a salary "that places a qualified teacher on a par with semi-skilled or untrained workers in the labour market."
Read the rest of the article here.