Tragedy of drill education Learning should liberate the mind, not standardise the input of knowledge Mugwena Maluleke, The Mercury, Durban, 17 September 2015 The South African Democratic Teachers Union is opposed to a standardised approach to the learning process for a number of reasons; chief among these is that the very approach of standardised testing - with the perfect example being the Annual National Assessment (ANA) - defies the logic of education. Education is supposed to liberate the mind and produce a self-standing critical individual who will be able to understand the dynamism of society and the surroundings; an individual who must appreciate the responsibility that he/she has towards the society in an ever-changing environment. We want to argue that standardised tests are most likely - as a result of two fundamental factors, a flawed system holistically and a lack of vision from the higher echelons of power - to reduce our schools into institutions that are meant to block independent thinking. The tragedy of what we can loosely call "drill education" as expressed through the ANAs is that it makes a number of inaccurate assumptions. The standardised tests assume that all the pupils develop at the same pace and that their contextual understanding of the world and their immediate surroundings will be the same. These tests assume that a pupil, at the time of confronting formal education for the first time, is an empty vessel that must be "filled" by the teacher with predetermined ideas that are often disconnected from the social realities of the pupil. This they do until such time that it is required to reproduce exactly what has been "put in". The assumption is that the pupils themselves do not have a role to play in the learning process, except to listen and receive the "theological truth" from the teacher and regurgitate it. This is the tragedy of a standardised approach to learning and assessing; the production of an "obedient" labour force for the market: human robots. British philosopher Bertrand Russell, known as one of the founders of "analytic philosophy", profoundly suggested when he was explaining what the role of education should be: "A child must be regarded as a gardener regards a young tree, as something with a certain intrinsic nature, which will develop into an admirable form, given proper soil, air and light." Noam Chomsky, in his book MisEducation, characterises this as an "instrumental skills-banking approach" that prevents the development of the kind of thinking that enables one to read the world critically. He goes on further to suggest that this kind of an instrumentalist approach to education is characterised by mindless, meaningless drills and exercises given in preparation for tests. In our case, we learned of certain districts in the Eastern Cape that were distributing "ANA exemplars" to pupils in preparation for the assessment. Consequently, teachers found themselves in an awkward position which involved moving away from the curriculum and preparing the pupils for the ANA - a tragedy in every sense of the word. Pupils are now being reduced into central vectors to influence statistical and not learning outcomes. This is symptomatic of a system that is inherently flawed and highly unlikely to produce the ideal citizen for the country. What is abundantly clear is that our priorities in an educational sense have been wrongly set. It is not about the inputs in the value chain but the statistics. A classical example would be the shocking reality that in the last financial year, the Department of Basic Education spent only R35 million on teacher development, as against the R200 million spent on the assessment. This is despite the fact that there is abundant research suggesting that continuous professional teacher development is one of the requirements towards the attainment of the desired educational outcomes. At this stage one needs to highlight one fundamental fact, despite the urgent need for a coherent teacher development strategy and commitment to implementation, teachers as a variable contribute only 14% towards educational outcomes. The current format of the assessment, with its focus on teachers, is deliberately blind to the other systemic factors that contribute a significant 86% as variables towards educational outcomes. Other factors are of a socio-economic nature. In its current form, the assessment remains the wrong tool and will thus lead us to a spectacular misdiagnosis. For instance, a teacher who faces a classroom with 60 pupils in a less affluent school will be expected to produce comparable results, using a similar tool to a teacher who is faced with 18 pupils in a more affluent school. This tells you that in its current form, the assessment is completely oblivious of the other systemic factors that have a direct impact on educational outcomes. Let us take this opportunity to dispel the myth that has been peddled by the likes of the DA's so-called shadow minister for basic education, Annette Lovemore. She has been at pains to suggest that teachers, or rather more specifically members of SADTU, are evading being assessed. She went as far as sending us a formal letter with the stamp of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa in which she tabled her misguided view that we must withdraw our call for our members not to take part in any assessment-related activity. Disturbingly, in the same letter, Lovemore went further to suggest that she had "agreed" with the minister of basic education that teachers themselves would in the very near future be required to write assessment. As organised labour, we would like to make it clear that we will never accept this kind arrogance and tone. Firstly, we must make it clear that we are not a rejectionist union; we have already put forward a firm proposal that the ANA must be, at the very least, administered in three-year cycles. In our view this will provide the necessary space and time for stakeholders, including teachers, to be engaged on the results and most importantly to effect remedial action and fit for purpose interventions. At the current rate, the ANA is just being reduced into another testing regime meant to overload teachers who are already overworked in higher than normal teacher to learner ratios and in environments that are characterised by the shortage of critical infrastructure. Let us also highlight that post our 2013 national general council, the minister of basic education noted our proposal in relation to ANAs and made a public commitment to engage organised labour on the matter as it has a direct impact on conditions of service. To our dismay, we saw the rise of the "gazette regime" that operates on the simple and yet dishonest logic of non-consultation coupled with an over-reliance on gazetting policies and pushing them down our throats by hook or crook. We want to make it clear that as organised labour, there will be nothing about us without us; collective bargaining is a fundamental right we will defend unapologetically. We are hopeful that the task team that has been established by the Department of Basic Education to include organised labour, to look into a possible remodelled ANA, is not just a publicity stunt by the employer. It must be genuine in its intention because education remains an apex priority and must be treated as such. The task team must look into the purpose, objectives and content of a triennial national assessment. The findings of such an assessment must improve both content knowledge and pedagogy. It must take out the privatisation element and reinvest the money into research to inform the required levels of proficiencies. . Maluleke is the general secretary of the SA Democratic Teachers Union. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. 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