In the upcoming months you’ll find out what a young gent who works as a Marketing Manager/Graphic Designer has to say about schools, education, art and design in schools as well as his recent nostalgic memories of the institution he called home for 12 years.

Malcolm Venter
Years ago, I came home with a delightful little book entitled Bureaucrats: How to Annoy Them. The author, who loathes bureaucrats with a deep, deep loathing , relates some hilarious tales about how he set out to annoy British bureaucrats – a sort of revenge saga. Knowing that I have similar sentiments about these [...]

The National Curriculum Statement indicates clearly that learners must be encouraged to think critically and to engage in problem-solving:
v  The Critical Outcomes require learners to ‘identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking’ (p2).
v  The ‘kind of learner envisaged’ must ‘demonstrate an ability to think logically and analytically, as well has [...]

Ek wil nie voorgee dat ek ooit myself gesien het as onderwyser nie, en daarom was dit nogal ‘n aanpassing om weer gewoond te raak aan die roetine van skoolgaan. Soos enige jong onderwyser, was ek aanvanklik skepties en selfs ‘n bietjie skrikkerig.

I don’t believe that it is just bias on my part which makes me believe that the most hard-driven teachers in our schools are our language teachers. From one point of view, they are better off because they have always had a huge marking load and were therefore not fazed, as other teachers were, by having to do Continuous Assessment (CASS).

With the average age of Civil Engineers in SA at approximately 57 years of age, we are going to experience major problems in SA over the next 10 – 30 years with our roads, dams, electricity, water reticulation, building and construction industries, unless we can somehow change the critical Maths and Science situation in SA.