State+must+spend+more+money+on+education,+Buti+Manamela,+C+Press

City Press, Johannesburg, 14/04/2007 20:57 - (SA)
=State must spend more money on education=


 * Buti Manamela**

‘Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail,” said Mark Twain in 1900, and that’s never been truer than it is today.

Seventy percent of those incarcerated are below the age of 35.

This is a result of a lack of access to education and jobs. The struggle for free education is linked to the struggle for employment.

They say the greatest investment any country can make is educating its youth.

Our main aim is to ensure education is free – from Grade R to a learners’ first qualification at tertiary level.

We believe in this and will fight for it to be achieved by 2008.

Consider how many graduates we could have financed with the R40 billion spent on the Gautrain and arms deal.

We may say that these were necessary, but a mother who buys a gun or a car when her children cannot go to school has skewed priorities.

Questions abound about our demands, including whether ours is a blanket call for children from poor and rich backgrounds.

Even the rich kids deserve free education.

It is only fair that their parents should pay for it through taxes.

We cannot exclude the majority of poor learners from education solely because we do not want to extend it to the rich minority.

The free education call means introducing universal, quality and affordable uniforms for all school-going children.

Free education means building more classrooms.

It means providing learning materials in time and without fail.

It means the government should stop wasting money on the Gautrain and the arms deal and redirect that money into education.

At the beginning of each school year, many children face two different realities when preparing for school.

On the one hand, learners walk long distances to get to school and don’t have uniforms.

They also often study under trees and their schools don’t have electricity or sanitation.

Some parents spend the little money they have on school fees rather than on much-needed groceries.

This is a totally different picture from the opulence that other children experience.

Fully uniformed, they don’t have to worry about school fees, have study materials and a school bus on their first day of learning.

These realities can only be bridged if we approach transformation in education as an investment in our country.

The Freedom Charter declared that the doors of learning and teaching shall be open for all.

This meant that all those who were excluded from education would receive schooling without any form of discrimination.

The Freedom Charter was referring to the doors of learning being opened not only on a financial basis, but also in terms of the content taught.

The 1976 youth uprising was not merely about paying school fees but about challenging the tyrannical nature of the education system.

They opposed its design which perpetrated racial discrimination.

They opposed its intended consequences of making black people literate and linguistically equipped only to become better servants of white masters.

The post-apartheid system has inherited this curse.

It trains learners to respect authority, fosters competition and suppresses critical thinking.

Instead of keeping the youth in jails for free, let us keep them in the classrooms – for free.


 * Manamela is the national secretary of the Young Communist League


 * From: http://www.news24.com/City_Press/Columnists/0,,186-1695_2098800,00.html**

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