Alan Paton was in black education. I was also in black Education.
How do I recall my experiences from those days?
I started off my career in education teaching whites, in 1974. In 1976 when a large influx of Portuguese refugees streamed into South Africa from Mozambique where FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique), triumphantly mowed down whatever served as good, moving targets. They made up a sizable percentage of the pupils I taught. I left Transvaal Education and took up a post at a technical College in Benoni. In 1982.
I started teaching at a black technical college in Nongoma in Kwa-Zulu Natal until June, 1988.
None of the textbooks I used previously became redundant. The standard of exams were the same. I was appointed examiner for Std. 8 Technical Drawing in 1985. This meant that I had to draw up exam papers for the province; and then mark them. No comments on the pass rates!
It may be so that Alan Paton’s students’ received an inferior education, but not those with whose teaching I was involved!
You may recall the place Nongoma, being situated in Natal. Regular news from there is that describing massacre; the province being irrigated and fertilized by blood, just as in its 19th century history. But I came to know of practices in their primary and high schools which caused those who didn’t “understand the way things work” to loose their jobs.
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