Retroid Raving

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It's the little things....B-)

It is with great interest that the Retroid Kollectiv read Jonathan Jansen's plog (=print blog) in The Times this am - and the one that preceded that, in fact.

For they touch squarely upon the button that gets us going on about equity: actual equity, that is, and not the politically correct kind.  For those too lazy to websurf, the executive summary is that the good Prof Jansen, the Rector of UFS and an almost-DVC here, is using the medium of his weekly column in the tabloidish rag to ask the readership whether or not he should accept into his University, needy people with low to average matric marks.  Two young black women and one young white woman, as it happens.

So here it goes: an open letter.

Dear Professor Jansen;

I read with great interest your two recent columns in The Times, dealing with your dilemma over acceptance of what is now three young women - because the issues that underly your dilemma have been vexing me for some time.  I applaud your decision, by the way, to take in the two young women you wrote about recently, and your apparent decision to personally mentor them: this is exactly the kind of thing that is needed to help deserving young people escape from the vicious cycle of poor marks condemning people to povery, forever.

Now you write, concerning the young white woman:

My initial inclination was to deny the student access; after all, I had announced that we planned to raise the academic admission standards and take only the best black and white students into the university.

The problem is her compelling story. She comes from a broken home. Raised for the most part by a single mother who is unemployed, this young woman is desperate to break the cycle of poverty in her family.

Some commonality with your previous story, surely?  Pretty much exact parallels with stories that could be told of many young people in this country, mainly black?

But you go on:

Here is a white student. Her parents were advantaged under apartheid. She had access to a solid education in a white, well-resourced school.

Really?  Do we know anything other than her being white, for a fact?  By 2010, presumably she will have had her 12 years of education entirely under an ANC-controlled Education Department - and she MAY have been to a well-resourced school, but may not have, also.  You say yourself, further on in your column, that the apartheid government also produced a white underclass: any advantage they may have had surely went out fo the window in 1994 or even earlier, when this child could only have been a toddler.

You say further:

Must she now be punished for the sins of the fathers? It is not her fault that she was born with a white skin, and she did not perpetrate the terrible laws that oppressed black people. And who knows what kinds of struggles she had to survive in her domestic situation as her mother battled day after day to keep her in school?

As I have had occasion to say in another blog (concerning nuns), amen, Brother Jansen, amen...!  For here you hit squarely upon the head of the problem - which is that need knows no colour bar, unlike our previous government, or even - sadly - our present one.

So, Professor Jansen: I commend this prospective student to you as just a student - and not a white one.  Look at her background; look at her prospects if she doesn't get this break - and make a decision that sets a precedent for you and others to follow.

That is, that need trumps colour.

Respectfully,

A UCT academic

And a Happy New Year to all of you ardent followers; prosperous too, hopefully!!  If the Academics Union does its job, of course....

And because he has had reason to wonder along similar lines in a UCT context recently, the Retroidal Komponent of the VftN noted this news snippet from the Tuesday Monday Paper of the 14th December with great interest:

"UK universities stand accused of hypocrisy over their claims to value teaching, after a major study of promotions policy and practice found that many are still failing to reward academics for leadership in pedagogy. Research by the Higher Education Academy and the University of Leicester's "Genie" Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning examines the promotion policies of 104 UK universities. In the research-intensive Russell Group and 1994 Group universities, only 58% and 35% cent, respectively, feature criteria on teaching and learning in their policies."

...and do we have any reason to consider that UCT is any better??  Aside from Retroid's particular bugbear, the "research-led teaching" concept, the Kollektiv is unaware of any concrete examples enshrined in writing in UCT policy documents that allows for teaching excellence to be weighted equally with research excellence in the assessment of the promotional prospects of any given academic.

Not, Retroid hastens to add, that he believes that he has been unfairly treated in any way, and would in fact rather that the retroidal u/g teaching component be reduced to zero because of research commitments...but this is another argument.

Really and truly, in this day and age in The New SA where we need so badly to help the badly-educated young escape from their academic straitjackets, should we not lead the way in establishing genuinely parallel teaching- and research-track career streams for academics?

 My Leicester connection - an excellent virological researcher who decided to become a "teacher track" academic - may have an opinion here; however, I think it is high time UCT got off the fence, and embraced teaching excellence - even in the absence of high-level research activity - as a legitimate criterion for promotion.

Long live, committed teachers, long live...!