Five ways education can save us from ourselves

Sweet Valley Primary School in Bergvliet, Cape Town, recently asked me something nobody had ventured before: “Come and speak to us about your philosophy of education.”

I am a practical man, not one drawn to needless abstraction about what we do as teachers.

And yet, whether we are conscious of it or not, all of us raise our families or teach our students with an operating philosophy of education.

We believe some things and not others, and act on them. Those many South African teachers who still inflict physical punishment on children really do believe that there is some link, however tenuous, between imposing pain on a young body and changing behaviour.

So I sat down and asked myself: “After a lifetime of teaching in schools and universities, what do you really believe?” You should try this as a student teacher, or even an experienced teacher.

I came up with five things that are at the core of my philosophy of education.

One, I believe that every child can achieve regardless of class, colour, creed or physical capacity. I therefore do not believe in streaming children into ability groups. I refuse to applaud mathematical literacy when everyone can do mathematics.

I look at children, whether in a rural township or an urban metropolis, and what I see is endless potential, not constraints.

And I do not believe that we should make judgments about the ability of learners when the problem is poor teaching and inadequate resources.

When teachers convey that sense of belief in children, the children rise to the occasion.

Two, I believe that love is the best form of discipline.

Parents who beat their children and teachers who harm their learners are cowards. You do it because they’re smaller than you and can’t fight back.

But punishment is not discipline.

All children must be taught to control and direct their behaviours according to acceptable social norms; a bully, for example, must know that such behaviour is unacceptable.

Good teachers can convey that message effectively and non-violently.

And when a child knows that your motivation for discipline is a deep commitment to their wholeness as fellow human beings, you will persuade them every time.

Three, I believe that as a teacher, or any leader for that matter, your strength lies in your weakness.

What this means is that by acknowledging your vulnerability as a human being, and that you are prone to error and capable of making wrong decisions, you are then able to lead empathetically rather than judgmentally.

The answer to the question “are you a racist?” is therefore not an indignant “No, I have never been” but “Yes, I am affected by our long history of racism, and at the best of times I am vulnerable to prejudice and bigotry.”

Weakness, in this context, means that you are open to change and always in a position of humility, willing to learn especially when you think you’re right.

This position is the direct opposite of the masculine, aggressive, self-assured postures that especially afflict masculine cultures in our muscular society.

And children need to observe such humanity.

Four, I believe that the most important subject taught is yourself.

Long after children forget what you taught them about parts of speech in an English classroom or irrational numbers in a mathematics lesson, they will remember who you were as a professional educator – that you were disciplined, taught with passion, took a personal interest in every child, wrote a compliment on a test paper, made much of a birthday, grieved with them when a relative died, and took them all for ice-cream one hot summer’s day.

What makes the subject stick, is who you are as a person and as a professional. It is what draws young people to become teachers themselves.

Five, I believe that the central purpose of education is to tame your passions.

When politicians fight in parliament, you are witnessing the colossal failure of education.

When you feel the constant need for self-justification in the face of criticism, your education has failed you.

When you are wronged and feel overwhelmed by the need for revenge, your education is shaky.

When you feel the need to overpower your debating opponent rather than listen attentively to a rival argument, then your passions control you and not the other way round.

When no amount of evidence can change your mind because of a stubborn, unyielding spirit that cannot accept being wrong, then you are poorly educated.

Education, in other words, saves us from ourselves, our raw emotions and tendency to self-destruct under pressure.

This is what I believe.

Professor Jonathan Jansen is vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State