Thinker Spot

My journey to (re)discover what is currently the state of secondary education in a typical urban school in the Johannesburg area has surely started off with a rude awakening. A week into the third term and I am left with enough proof of a number of things that are completely out of place. Although the new ANC-led government has since it came into power in 1994 failed to transform education (amongst an array of other failures, especially broad-based service delivery), we are faced with another reality: in a growing economy with wide-spread unemployment, the disconnect between what the workforce has to offer and what the market requires obviously starts at secondary education level. The ANC-government's inadequacies surely amplify many of the structural problems with the educational system. However, the very model which they try to perfect is a completely outdated one. The government prior to 1994, and surely the one after 1994 failed to redefine the educational system in the wak...