Education, looking in all the wrong places

The story is told of a boy who was seen searching frantically for a coin he had lost. It was dark. The boy was down on his hands and knees beneath the corner street light looking for his coin. He was very intent. A man happened by and asked the boy what he was looking for. It went like this: Boy: "I dropped a coin and I'm trying to find it." Man: "Where did you drop the coin?" Boy: "Oh, I dropped it over there," as he pointed to a spot well beyond the area illuminated by the street light. Man: "If you dropped the coin over there, why are you looking for it over here?" Boy: "Because it's lighter over here." Like that little boy, the education decision makers of South Africa, over the centuries, have spent their time and energies - wasted their time and energies - looking in all the wrong places for the answers to education's most compelling and perplexing problems. Rather than looking for answers where the problems are, that is, in the classroom where education takes place, they have been looking elsewhere. In fact, they have been looking almost everywhere else. With what effect? Nothing of substance has changed. That is, the process of teaching children has not changed nor improved systemically in any measurable way. This is a centuries-old dilemma with which education has just never come to grips.