According to our Constitution, every child in South Africa has a right to basic education.

This includes an active effort from the government to improve education, so as to repair the damage done by the deeply unequal and dysfunctional Apartheid education system.

As we know, however, what the Constitution says is not always what the country does. The recent reports of Home Affairs’ attitude towards women who wish to keep their birth names is evidence of this.

Back to education.

Before we became a democracy, the education system could be summed up by these revolting words from Apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd:

“What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.”

The Bantu Education Act was introduced in 1953, five years after the National Party instated Apartheid policies in South Africa. The system was created to separate the quality of education according to race.

These days, the education system is arguably separated according to class and location. The rich attend private schools, while the poor suffer at the hands of a failing education system.

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to take steps to remedy this, and they’ve made Verwoerd their poster boy:

Truth bomb.

According to the Amnesty campaign site, this is where our education system is right now:

• Almost 50% of learners drop out of school between Grade 1 and Grade 12.
• 78% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language.
• 61% of Grade 5 learners cannot add or subtract.
• 46% of schools lack basic sanitation, including 17% where pupils are forced to use highly dangerous pit latrines.
• Only 14% of pupils that enter our school system will qualify for university.

We already know how important it is to get a tertiary education, the foundation of which is primary and secondary schooling.

Amnesty has created a petition in an attempt to force the government to act and urge South Africa’s leaders to guarantee all children their constitutional right to quality basic education.

Their demands include providing proper resources to teach basic, quality skills in reading and mathematics by January 1, 2021, and the replacement of every school pit latrine with safe, clean toilets by January 1, 2021.

If you consider that only one in three schools has a library, and nearly half of the grade one class of 2007 didn’t write Matric in 2018, this is just the first step towards improving things in South Africa.

Do your good deed for the day and sign the petition here.

[source:amnestyinternational]