We need to restore the weaponry of education

At the birth of our democracy, education was characterised as the key to success. Almost 30 years later, the born-frees are not even considering spending time in a classroom. 

Today, the statistics that interrogate school dropouts renders Nelson Mandela’s wisdom irrelevant, when he said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” 

Seemingly this arsenal, just like the English Premier League club, fires blanks. 

Many black parents in SA would berate this generation of children that Nompumelelo Mohohlwane talks about in her research for the research co-ordination, monitoring and evaluation unit of the department of basic education with Debra Shepherd from the department of economics at Stellenbosch University. 

The research estimated that a staggering figure of at least 500,000 children were not in school. That is half a million young people, the future of our country. 

It is disheartening that when these kids look around in their villages and townships, the graduates themselves are jobless and hopeless. They are qualified individuals who are struggling to make ends meet. And the truth of the matter is we don’t go to school to contribute to the academic space. We go to school to obtain qualifications that will put us in better positions to get opportunities or jobs to better our lives and the lives of those we love. 

As the graduates are trying to knock on every door they come across, guess who is thriving and making bold financial moves? It is another school dropout who somehow struck gold in the tenderpreneur space. In their minds, they have concluded that you don’t need a qualification to make it in life. 

And this point I am not surprised that the young ones don’t see a need to continue being in school. And this is not a Covid-induced problem. It is result of a degenerating economy that is built on a schooling system that is flawed. From primary to tertiary learning, the system is not producing employable people. 

The biggest social ill that most black children and adults are trying so hard to fight is poverty. We go to school with the hope that we will one day get education that will propel us to the working class of our country. 

Failure to do this means hope is lost, education is perceived as a fallacy and we sadly find ourselves in a situation like this. 

When comparing the 2020 figures to the 2021 statistics, the research suggests that an additional 200,000 children aged seven to 17 were out of school. In November 2020 there were 400,000 children out of school. The data was collected between April 6 and May 11. 

When I look back, almost 25 years ago when I started school, no child would be left at home to play and abscond school unless they were really sick. It was unheard of. It was school or nothing. Our parents were not even interested in the extramural activities that could have birthed the next Percy Tau, Caster Semenya or Sho Madjozi. They actually thought those were not careers to consider. 

As far as making education fashionable, we are winning at tertiary level. We are seeing a lot of people graduate. We are having more master's degree holders and PhD graduates, showing that more people are staying in tertiary institutions. 

However, our preliminary stage of schooling is having more dropouts each year. 

The question now is how do we convince the children that it is important to remain in school if they want to have a better and more promising future? 

How do they stay in school and complete their primary schooling when they don’t see anything positive coming out of the lives of the many graduates who are jobless and hopeless? 

As a country, we need to restore the weaponry of education. Children don’t just want to believe that education is a weapon with which they can change the world. They want to see a world that is changed by the education they obtain. 

• Chabalala is the founder the Young Men Movement, an organisation that empowers the boy child to ensure that we have well-rounded men in the future.