Dear Organlearners,
What can happen when humans are considered as resources on a national
scale in a nation wide organisation? The following long quote concerns
South Africa and its education. Allister Sparks was during the Apartheid
era one of the most outspoken journalists against the policy of Apartheid.
He was also very much in favour of the ANC (African national Congress, the
present ruling "party") as far as the "security" laws in those times
allowed him to be. A few months ago he was even appointed as head of the
news department of SABC, the official broadcaster of South Africa. Thus
there cannot be any doubt as to where his sympathies lie. Yet eleven
months ago he wrote:
> Cape Times 20/01/97
>
> Schools policy needs swift review
>
> ALLISTER SPARKS
>
> The Education Department's policy of encouraging the retrenchment of
> school teachers is one of the most bizarre acts of national
> self-immolation that it is possible to imagine.
> Here is a country that desperately needs teachers, perhaps more
> urgently than anything else, yet it has just retrenched 12 000 of
> the best of them and is set to lay off thousands more in the course
> of this year.
> This is sheer madness. It is rather like a man in the desert dumping
> his water bottles to lighten his load.
> What makes the policy even more inexplicable is that it comes from a
> department that has otherwise done a good job. One that has moved
> South Africa from segregated to integrated schooling, and from
> partial to mass education, in just one year.
> Thousands of schools have been integrated all over the country,
> including the most conservative areas of the platteland. And it has
> happened almost without incident with only one brief protest
> demonstration by a handful of right-wing parents at a school in
> Potgietersrus. When one recalls the turmoil that accompanied school
> integration in the American South, when President Kennedy had to
> call out the National Guard to force the admission of James Meredith
> to the University of Mississippi, and Governor George Wallace flung
> his gauntlet in the dust at the door of the University of Alabama,
> this is nothing short of astonishing.
> Yet here is the selfsame department committing this monumental
> blunder. The aim of the new policy is clear enough; it is the
> practical effect that is the problem.
> The aim is to try to allocate education resources more equitably.
> Some provinces, notably Gauteng and Western Cape, are deemed to be
> overstaffed compared with others. So their budgets have been cut and
> the funding transferred to the leaner provinces.
> This has caused Gauteng and Western Cape to offer teachers the
> option of either being relocated to one of the other provinces or
> taking a retrenchment pay-out.
> Not surprisingly, most have taken the money. Particularly those
> whose seniority and long service qualify them for big pay-outs of up
> to R1,5-million.
> The result is a haemorrhage of some of the country's most
> experienced teachers.
> Seven hundred headmasters and headmistresses have reportedly quit in
> the Western Cape alone, which is nearly half the heads of the
> province's schools. Six thousand other teachers have gone with them,
> and another 6 000 are expected to go in 1997.
> In Gauteng, 80 000 new pupils are moving into the province's schools
> this year as thousands of teachers move out. Mary Metcalfe, the
> province's hard-pressed education MEC, estimates that Gauteng needs
> at least 100 new schools. Who is going to staff them?
> This is nothing short of disastrous. If we are to compete in the new
> global economy, then building up our skills base should be a
> national priority. It is a skills base that was severely stunted by
> decades of apartheid education, and which now needs most urgently to
> be rehabilitated and developed.
> The Asian "tigers" have shown the way, with their massive emphasis
> on technology and science education. It is the first step on the
> road to economic success and, in our case, survival.
> We should be preparing for an intensive educational campaign focused
> particularly on the three most critical subjects necessary to
> compete in that tough new world: science, mathematics and English.
> Instead these are the very teachers the new policy is driving out of
> the schools.
> The ironies are many and bitter. Bantu Education was arguably the
> most wicked aspect of apartheid's crime against humanity, stunting
> the development of human potential and crippling the nation's skills
> base. Now a policy intended to right those wrongs is unwittingly
> doing the same.
> Even more ironic is that the new policy has been implemented with
> the aim of achieving greater egalitarianism. In fact, many of these
> experienced teachers are taking their pay-outs and are being snapped
> up by private schools. The result will be even more elitist
> education than before.
> President Mandela set an important example at Botshabelo last Sunday
> when he publicly admitted that the ANC had made some "serious and
> fundamental mistakes" in its first two-and-a-half years in office.
> Let us hope the government realises this is another one and that it
> moves swiftly to review the policy instead of digging in its heels
> the way it did over Sarafina 2 and some of the other blunders. That
> would be a sign of maturity.
It is now eleven months later. Was the school's policy reviewed swiftly?
No. Even worse is going to happen. Tens of thousands of temporary teachers
will be layed off by the end of the year. They are considered as
expendable resources as the financial situation worsens due to
irresponsible squandering of taxes.
Should you carefully analyze Sparks' article, you will find that he does
not identify the cause(s) of this "serious and fundamental mistake". I
believe that there are several causes acting in different dimensions.
One cause acts on the level of organisation. In the Goverment's official
communiques on education the term "human resources" (teachers, pupils,
graduates, work force) abounds with a surprsing frequency. Furthermore,
the term is used most often in such a sense that it could be replaced by
the word "commodity" (something to be bought or sold as the situation
dictates). The term is seldom used in the sense of an "holistic organ", an
essential part of the organisation.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>