Is our education lacking?
A group of us were sitting around discussing South African education over a cup of coffee. We weren’t really talking about the problems in education today, or the lack of respect kids have for their teachers, but rather what we wish we had been taught at school.
It all started when Rochelle said that many things that she had been taught was useless to her now later in life - things such as chemistry and aspcts of geography and history. According to her, these things have just never come up in her working life, or her day-to-day life.
Her sentiments were somewhat echoed by Francois who commented that there were a load of other useful things which should have been taught to better prepare him for life and society. I asked him what he meant by that and he went on to detail a number of things.
The first thing he mentioned was why schools do not teach pupils how to open their own business. Francois has been wanting to do just this for some time now and he stated that he didn’t know the first thing about it. Some things he brought up were:
How do you register a business?
How do you get financing for a business?
What different kinds of businesses are there (such as Closed Corps)?
How do you register your business with SARS?
This generated a lively discussion and everyone agreed that these things should be taught in schools - particularly in our current society where it seems that it is better to have your own business than work for a corporation.
This conversation led to some other ideas on what should be taught in schools. Thabo came up with another good thing: The stock market.
As he told us, he hears about the stock exchange every day on the news, but he hasn’t a clue about how to invest etc. Some of his questions were:
How do you buy and sell stock?
How do you know when to buy and sell stock?
Can anyone use a stock broker?
Do you have to be rich to play the stock market?
All these things are also useful to know in society. It seems that the majority of South Africans are totally clueless when it comes to these basics of economics.
It was mentioned that some people did learn about these kinds of things if they chose to do Accountancy as a subject in school, or did economics at the post-school level, but by and large most people never learn about them. Some schools do offer a course in business, but usually as an elective.
One does have to wonder why education tends to neglect these areas which are so important to functioning in modern society. Is it time to change the way we look at education and the subjects we teach students?
Related Posts:
Loading ...
September 24th, 2008 at 9:57 am
It certainly makes sense what you discussed with a cup of coffee. However, I feel that most of this information should be part of the existing subjects in schools and there is not much need for a whole lot of new subjects. It surely can be an extension of the subject “Economy”, for instance. Business is not something that people can be taught in theory. Oh well, it can be yes, but I would rather think that it takes special skill in personality.
I also agree that most South Africans do not have the information at hand to start a business. But, that is a once off occurrence when the business is started. The trick does not lie within the creation of the business, but rather to keep it going and for that one would require skills I believe cannot be educated. Business principals can be educated, but not how to make business run successfully. Opportunity and the recognition of opportunity is a skill that only some individual personalities might have and I do not believe it is something that can be successfully taught. It is actually good that not everybody will attempt a new business. There will be far more failures if that are the case. I firmly believe that it should take the real entrepreneur to do it.
Further, there are many institutions that can assist with higher levels / more advanced education in all the mentioned subjects or the areas which lack this edification at school level. How many businesses can really survive without this crucial education at advanced level and how many children will start a business directly after they left school? Even artisans require furthering their studies.
This principal of starting a business as soon as you are done with school appears to be projected on the third world survival tactics, rather than an upcoming giant globally.
JS, get your friends to come and add some ideas here too.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
JS & Vaal,
Why were Technicons allowed to award degrees? That is the sole territoy of Universities. Why were Universities and Technicons forced to merge? Why were old Technicons renamed as “Universities” of technology?
Can a B Tech “degree” be mentioned in the same sentence as a degree earned at one of the former leading universities (Tukkies, Stell, UCT, Potch etc?).
Why should fundamentals (such as basic arithmetic) be part of learnerships aimed at improving job related skills? Why? Education did not do their job and the problem is now passed on to labour and industry.
Before I even attempt to answer the question “Is our education lacking?” I humbly rest my case.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Louisn,
It is all about politics and this argument cannot be directed to another course. That is typically how so many things have changed in this country, not only education. On every level this strategy was implemented to accommodate and become accustomed to affirmative action. Well, any monkey can tell what the effect will be on the long run on a country and its people. South Africa was well known for its high standard of education and the result of this implementation will claim its toll. I can just use something as simple as the police department and crime for an example. Yes, it is due to lowering of standards, nothing more and nothing less. I still cannot understand that everything must be dragged down for this purpose. This utterly amazes me.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Spot on Vaal. We can be very happy that we were educated in the good old days.