School and Universal Pass Percentage
Due Date: 1 September 2014
Compulsory: Yes
Function:
The purpose of this assignment is to teach you how to read an article and to critically engage in academic reading and reflecting on the material in an academic manner by answering the short paragraphs assigned. When marking the assignment, poor language expression will be penalized. Examples of poor language expression range from incomprehensible to barely literate vocabulary and sentence patterns, serious errors in sentence structure, language diction, spelling, punctuation and so on.
Education at crossroads
In traditional life, day-care centres for children or child-minders were unknown. When mother, father and the rest of the adult members of the family went to the fields and the rest took their livestock out to pasture, the children were minded by the old men and women who were part of the family. Then schooling became a major activity in a child’s life. If a child did not attend school, he or she was jeered at and called mockingly “matshaba sekolo” – school dodger. Even traditionalists who went to circumcision school came back to resume their formal studies. The school, therefore, became a kind of second home, a child-minder. (Mphahlele, Big shoe, Small foot, Part 1, Eskia Mphahlele, June 1989)
The present debacle about the education system in South Africa has reached alarming proportions. There are too many systemic problems, ranging from maladministration, poor service delivery, the lack of facilities in some areas of the country to appalling matric standards of pass percentages. Numeracy and Literacy tests have placed the country behind many less developed countries in Africa, yet South Africa has the strongest economy in the continent.
Politicians continue to blame the past. Decades of apartheid and colonialism ensured that the majority of people in this country could not have access to quality education. Not so long ago a senior politician blamed Hendrik Verwoerd for the
Compulsory: Yes
Function:
The purpose of this assignment is to teach you how to read an article and to critically engage in academic reading and reflecting on the material in an academic manner by answering the short paragraphs assigned. When marking the assignment, poor language expression will be penalized. Examples of poor language expression range from incomprehensible to barely literate vocabulary and sentence patterns, serious errors in sentence structure, language diction, spelling, punctuation and so on.
Education at crossroads
In traditional life, day-care centres for children or child-minders were unknown. When mother, father and the rest of the adult members of the family went to the fields and the rest took their livestock out to pasture, the children were minded by the old men and women who were part of the family. Then schooling became a major activity in a child’s life. If a child did not attend school, he or she was jeered at and called mockingly “matshaba sekolo” – school dodger. Even traditionalists who went to circumcision school came back to resume their formal studies. The school, therefore, became a kind of second home, a child-minder. (Mphahlele, Big shoe, Small foot, Part 1, Eskia Mphahlele, June 1989)
The present debacle about the education system in South Africa has reached alarming proportions. There are too many systemic problems, ranging from maladministration, poor service delivery, the lack of facilities in some areas of the country to appalling matric standards of pass percentages. Numeracy and Literacy tests have placed the country behind many less developed countries in Africa, yet South Africa has the strongest economy in the continent.
Politicians continue to blame the past. Decades of apartheid and colonialism ensured that the majority of people in this country could not have access to quality education. Not so long ago a senior politician blamed Hendrik Verwoerd for the