When Kerneels van der Bijl* (not his real name), a young, white Afrikaans-speaking student at Stellenbosch University recently approached me, his request caught me off-guard.
I had taught him and 280 other teacher education students for a term and had them work through a case study of a turnaround school where I work in the morning.
The school had a spell of poor academic results and is located in a volatile community where gangs and drugs and absentee parents are common.
Kerneels said he wanted to offer his services for free to teach his subject at this high school.
I was overjoyed knowing that such a placement would be a life-changing experience for this courageous young man.
That experience with Kerneels got me thinking. It is time to place white and middle class black students in working class schools.
For too long these brand new teachers graduating from our universities go on to teach in schools like the ones in which they studied as pupils.
Some even take up posts in their former primary or high schools.
The main consequence of these voluntary choices is that inequalities are sustained: white teachers teach in white schools; middle class teachers teach in middle class schools; and graduating teachers from poor and working class schools — you guessed it — find their way back into such disadvantaged schools.
Those who break this pattern represent a very small minority.
Nobody wants to talk about this sensitive subject because as South Africans we have found ways of avoiding the gaze on what is uncomfortably and painfully obvious.
No more. Let’s talk.
Unlike the health profession, where there is a so-called Zuma year (named after then health minister, Nkosozana Zuma who introduced a compulsory year of community service) in which the government places you in a clinic or hospital outside your comfort zone, the teaching profession has no such arrangements.
Your subsidised teacher education qualification allows you as a white or middle class graduate to teach in a comfortable, well-resourced school or pack your bags for Dubai, Vietnam or North London. Lekker.
I like freedom of choice, and I also like social justice. I like that our children can be exposed to teachers from across the artificial divides of race and class.
I like the idea of young teachers experiencing a fuller range of the human experience when it comes to teaching and learning.
I like the kind of graduate who is not weighed down by privilege but can think outside their own skin, so to speak. In other words, new teachers like Kerneels.
As I write this, I can hear the counterarguments. But what about safety?
Agreed, it’s a problem everywhere but arrangements should be made everywhere to keep all teachers and pupils as safe as possible.
But what about freedom of choice? True, but those choices are constrained for everyone. Nobody chooses to live in a shack while this is a call to live and love and learn beyond one’s narrow self-interests alone.
But what if I prefer my own culture? You have no idea what your own culture is ... it is all of us, together, that constitute this wonderful South Africanness that remains open to citizens and non-citizens alike.
Kerneels came to the school and worked his heart out. The teachers loved him, and he found the classes challenging.
He was after all a new teacher in a context with limited resources and lots of youthful energies.
University training does not prepare you for these realities and I remember how I struggled as a new teacher in the same circumstances.
Then his beloved grandfather took ill and Kerneels, the volunteer, asked to be released to spend time with oupa during his closing days.
Shortly afterwards, I got the call that the old man had passed on but not before instructing Kerneels: “Jy moet luister vir daai man!” (that was me, apparently).
At the funeral, I was the only black person in a sea of white faces and found myself warmly received by the family.
It was a hectic work day, but I was going to the funeral to honour Kerneels and demonstrate brotherhood to this exceptional young South African during his time of mourning and loss.
We had a wonderful mentoring session that lasted two hours and, as he was about to leave, Kerneels reached into his bag and gave me a tie. This was one of his oupa’s favourite ties, and he wanted me to have it.
I felt so incredibly blessed to know this young man and found myself hopeful, once again, that the future of our country looks very bright indeed if we can produce more young graduates of the calibre and integrity of Kerneels van der Bijl.
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