[imagesource:flickr]

Jesus wept, this woman deserves a medal for her sustained efforts to downgrade literacy among our children. After all, who needs to read when you can recognise the ol’ green, black and yellow, right comrade?

In fact, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has said that instead of being condemned, her department should be commended for being courageous for participating in a survey on the reading comprehension of Grade 4 pupils.

So despite the fact that only 19% of South Africa’s Grade 4 pupils can read for meaning, she should be commended for at least taking part in the survey.

“I want to repeat. Our kids can read. They can combine M, A and N to mean man.”

South Africa was part of the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) that evaluated the kids.

Motshekga acknowledged that the overall reading scores of the country’s Grade 4 learners, who participated in Pirls 2021, dropped from 320 points attained in 2016 to 288 points in 2021.

The opposition parties pointed out that despite these findings, the Education Department has no plan to improve things. Come on man, since when does government have a plan to deal with anything?

Opposition MP Baxolile Nodada perhaps summed it up best:

“You see, minister, the thing with surveys of achievement is that they don’t care what you say you’ve done, they just measure what children actually know. And what they revealed was devastating.”

It is the worst kind of neglect to have a system that cannot prepare children adequately for their own futures.

Angie and her incompetent ilk should have been kicked to the curb ages ago, but as long as the cadre machine keeps churning out voters with no future, she seems happy.

M-A-N, that spells f****king disgrace.

[source:iol]