We always hear about politicians and business people collectively saying and lamenting that education/ lack of is one of the main problems that our country is facing.

Various education stakeholders such as Education “Think-Tanks”, academia and government just to name a few, have already wildly crafted good work.

The question I wish to explore with this column is whether we, as a society, are supportive or doing enough when it comes to the education of our children. We frequently blame the system when weird things creep up in our schoolyards.

The mentality seems to be that somebody must answer and that somebody is not we as members of the society.

“Of course ‘Uncle Sam’ must answer. After all, we pay tax, some of us might be thinking. Well, there’s nothing wrong with this mentality at all, but someone once told me it is better to concentrate on things that you can control other than those that you cannot.

We sometimes can’t control what ‘Uncle Sam’ does, but we can control our contribution to education as a society. Media and other research institutions have done a lot in alerting us about the ills in our education system and that should be applauded and commended.

The question is what proactive measures we can put as a society to ensure that we rid our schools of these ills?

The column will also examine the way we think about education and value it as a society. This column promises to provoke (or encourage you to continue if you have already started) you to start thinking seriously about the education of your child.

This column also gives a good platform for us as the community to debate the education issues amongst ourselves. It is probably time for us to start the education debate with the aim of taking the ownership of our schools as a community.

A friend once said the problem we face at our schools is that we as a community don’t assume enough ownership of our schools because we believe that the government must take ownership.

This kind of thinking makes our schools vulnerable to all manner of criminal activities because these criminals have that kind of mentality when it comes to our schools. Surely my friend’s assertions have some substance because once cri?minals (who are members of our community, not some aliens from planet “unknown”) start having that kind of thinking about our schools,they think it is some kind of a place where they can commit all sorts of criminal deeds.

Schools belong to the community and are institutions of our society that deserve to be treated with dignity.

In this column I therefore invite all of us in the community, religious groups, education professionals, parents, political groups, non-governmental organizations and everyone else, to start the dialogue about education. Please send your views to proedparent@gmail.co.za.