Graeme Bloch, that is - not the Retroid Kollectiv; they're just older.
But we do not mean to be elliptical (or pre-postmodern, or derridist, or other synonym for obscure): we refer to a UCT Daily News item, wherein said educationist bemoans, yet is not too depressed by, the state of SA schooling.
But to digress: if one delves into the Dark Past, one (of the Kollectiv) remembers a much younger Graeme, with longer and darker hair and a fine beard and a forbidding demeanour for those of us not Committed to the Struggle, shrilly announcing to all who would listen, up on the roof on Condom Heights Leo Marquard Hall that dark night (there was a blackout over most of Cape Town) in June 1976, "They're coming! They're coming!", as the fires started out on the Flats. "They" didn't, as it happened, and the lights came back on, and rain and the Fire Brigade put the fires out, and life went on.
But as we said, he is now much wiser. And older. And into education. And has a book on the subject. And lectures on it, publicly.
"It's going to take a concerted effort from many - teachers, government, society - to tackle the problems, he cautioned. "Given the complexity of education... it really is going to be called on all of us to get active."
Yes, well: ever since the bulk of the Kollectiv came to these fair shores in the mid-1970s, it has been obvious to us that the SA educational system was seriously flawed: kids were taught to rote-learn rather than to understand, the currciculum was simplistic and archaic compared to the then Rhodesian system used next door - and teachers seemed to be badly educated. And that was the white school system....
Things have improved since then, from an end-user perspective (hey, we teach!) - but the poorer / wealthier schools divide is still obvious, with the former products being far more prone to falling back on memorisation, and really struggling with simple concepts that have obviously never been taught properly.
So yes, we do all have to become active: and how better than by using the Open Education Resource paradigm, and trying to get poorer learners into using it? We have our eyes on the Biology syllabus....
