It was the late Philip Jackson who gave us the term “hidden curriculum”
to describe the things children learn, inside but also outside the classroom,
that are neither planned nor intended.
The explicit curriculum contains official knowledge —teachers are
required to teach the structure of the atom or the meanings of metaphors or the
reasons for the Great Trek. But children learn much more than what is printed
in the school syllabus or the government’s Curriculum Assessment Policy
Statements (CAPS).
In a good school, children line up for classes, wait their turn during
question time and compete to win one of the academic or cultural or sporting
awards of the school. In this way they learn about discipline, respect and
achievement. In a dysfunctional school, on the other hand, children learn, when
the teacher is always late for classes and the broken window never gets fixed
and the toilet is a pit latrine, that they really do not matter to the adults
around them.
There are scholars who argue that this hidden curriculum is even more
powerful in shaping the values of youth than the official knowledge they are
required to learn.
Which is what got me thinking about the powerful hidden curriculum that
millions of young people are being “taught” by observing what is happening in
South Africa over the past few days but, indeed, also during the past several
years.
There are scholars who argue that this hidden curriculum is even more
powerful in shaping the values of youth than the official knowledge they are
required to learn.
They learn that you can be corrupt and still be a leader in this
country; that you can conspire with wealthy, foreign families to steal this
country bare and lie about it with impunity; that you can appoint to leadership
in government the most incompetent people regardless of the consequences; that
you can oversee the loss of lives of mentally challenged patients, leave the
country for studies and then come back and blame everyone else; that
state-owned entities are looting fields and that tenders offer routine
opportunities for self-enrichment not selfless service to the public; that the
powerful can defy the courts for as long as they can; that when you are angry
as a man you can lash out and kick a woman from a rival political interest
group on the ground; and that loyalty to the party is more important than
loyalty to the country.
Young people are not stupid. They learn their most important values
through careful observation of what happens around them and, importantly, from
how influential adults behave in public life. This is the real damage of the
Zuma presidency. It has made normal what should be repulsive. It has weakened
democratic institutions. It has set such a low bar for public life that any
lazy, unskilled and avaricious persona can make a run for office whether in a
local municipality or the national government.
Young people observe these phenomena and make calculations of their own.
Yes, a degree can be helpful in landing a job and hard work probably helps; but
much easier to do and more quickly achieved is to get on that slimy path to
deployment. That is how we should understand the political killings in parts of
the country — somebody is a threat to the advancement of someone else, so the
person gets taken out. And all the time the children are watching us.
As I passed through entrance to Parliament this week for a meeting with
one of our ministers, the security staff greeted and told me that I should turn
around — SONA was postponed. I was happy about this. I could not bear the
thought that once again thousands of South African schoolchildren would have
observed the hidden curriculum of chaos, crudity and impunity.
Not too long ago young people gained their confidence and modelled their
behaviour on the life of Nelson Mandela. I hardly go anywhere in this beautiful
country without a teacher quoting his famous statement: “Education is the most
powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”
Mandela respected our public institutions and, when a wealthy person
asked what they could do for the new South Africa, invariably he would ask them
to build a school. To young people across the world, Madiba became the best
example of a compelling hidden curriculum.
Our new government, and its leadership, will have to rebuild from
scratch what the Zuma presidency destroyed. It could make a really good start
by not paying the outgoing President Zuma as an encouragement for him to leave
office. That would be simply a continuation of the destructive hidden
curriculum to which we have all become accustomed.
Jonathan Jansen is a senior professor formerly associated with the University of the Free State, South Africa. Apart from having served as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2016/17, he is also the president of both the South African Institute of Race Relations and the South African Academy of Science.
He started his career as a biology teacher in the Cape after he had completed his science degree at the University of the Western Cape. He went on to obtain an MS degree from Cornell University and a PhD from Stanford. Jansen also holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Vermont and Cleveland State University.
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