South Africa needs to look for and press the teacher training reset button.

The South African Constitution declares that everyone has a right to basic and further education. Without free and compulsory education paid for by the state, society will be vulnerable to an unnatural aristocracy formed by those who afford paid and private education. The desire to have the white race of South Africa as an aristocracy was arguably the deeper reason why Verwoerd targeted disparities in education as the surest template to make apartheid work. The long-term benefits of his policy still torment the country to date. The apartheid state knew that education was not only about maths and science but creativity, imagination, and innovation. Denying equal and comprehensive quality education would guarantee the achievement of social engineering objectives which the apartheid ideology set for South Africa. 

Education as a right obligates the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfil its provision in South Africa. It being enshrined in the Bill of Rights is evidence that without free basic education, the democratic order is incomplete. Free education is, therefore, not about parents not paying only. It is about what the state puts at the disposal of society to ensure that the right to basic education is fulfilled. 

 

One of the fundamental capital investments a society can make in education is the quality of teachers, human or otherwise, it allows in front of its learners. Producing quality teachers is thus an anchor activity for any national development planning effort because development outcomes are a function of how the education system is synchronised with the economic objectives of a democratic or political order. Suppose our NDP comprises a network of interdependent parts that work towards eliminating poverty and reducing inequality. In that case, it needs to draw on the energies of its people, whose education is a core determinant. As much as society sees all other capital investments as key in propelling GDP per capita, they should see the shortage of one quality teacher as many in a nation's quest to be competitive? 

 

One of the permanent indictments the post-1994 state must be imprisoned for, is its crimes against human capital investment in South Africa. The first and main charge should be the closure of teacher training colleges. To paraphrase President Ramaphosa 'the post-1994 democratic state may not stand alone in the dock on the crimes of human capital underdevelopment and choking the basic education teacher supply side, but it does stand as accused number one. If a commission of policy inquiry is to be constituted. The impact of this crime will make the somewhat overrated Zondo Commission Report a walk in the park. The latest report on the quality of teaching and teachers is the tip of the iceberg the titanic South Africa is fast approaching to collide.   

 

Suppose the possibility of a less than 50% performance by any political party in the next election is anything to go by. In that case, society should demand the reopening of teacher training colleges from the coalition government of the day to rapidly deal with the supply side of basic human capital development demands. Education of society is the single most important tool that a nation can use to feed its soul. Teaching is a vocation that should be in the domain of humans. Machines do not have the human touch to transmit the intangibles that humanity learns from observation. 

 

The collapse of values as manifest in crime impunity, the rise of strange breeds of leaders, the growing disrespect and disregard of public infrastructure, the education-linked limitations to being globally competitive, and the inability to learn and relearn as the epitome of a quality education system is choked by the gross disregard of teachers as part of the nation's capital investment assets. The IMF and other multilateral bodies' structural adjustment programs have made 'the government of the day' see teachers as overheads whose mechanical reduction from the staff establishment makes the national balance sheet look good. 

 

If the situation is not reversed, it will be a permanent indictment to whoever led higher education during the teacher quality decline. Teacher training colleges, like their other counterparts, nursing, were institutions created to be only about how to teach and nurse. They focused on basic education curricula as subject specialisation; the rest was about how best to make the education occurrence of a basic education learner meaningful. The outcomes of what teacher training college produced, and no longer does, is the declining sports, arts, and culture prowess of South Africa in comparative terms. 

The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Education Research report is another piece of evidence that a reset button on who the public that our public service is serving should be found and pressed. The reset process should answer if humans in the public service are organs of the state, and if they are, how much of a capital investment they are on the national balance sheet. Through our teachers, we have learnt that "if you want to succeed in life, most often you need to put in the hours, develop good habits, work well with others, and work your way through the system. They made sure we know that this is true "whether you study English, physics, history, engineering or business", you still need to be a self determined sovereign individual. These were the teachers from closed colleges such as TCE, Setotolwane, Tivumveni, Hoxana, Tshiya, Hebron, Soweto Teachers College, and many others. All these institutions are today lying empty and derelict whilst the proverbial education Rome is burning. CUT!!!