Whose language is it anyway?

The language question has reared its ugly head again. Recently Rebecca Davies wrote an article about research that confirms “English is leading the way as the most preferred teaching language”.  As an English teacher this ought to make me happy however, I am not convinced that the findings from this research account for the complexity of language use. In other words: umnqwazi wam awuqini. Statistics about who speaks what language don’t take into serious account the context, the so-called “new” South Africa.

I am a language teacher who is able to negotiate three South African languages to accommodate the language diversity that my learners bring into the classroom. I am also an avid reader of isiXhosa literature and my favourite poet is Nontsizi Mgqwetho. My double consciousness allows me great fun in my classroom. Anyone eavesdropping into my lessons might say I am a bad English teacher because at any given time learners know they can pipe up in isiXhosa (and Afrikaans, though this is often slang) and the lesson will continue to  unfold.

The language in education debate only confirms the many problems in the education system: there are two systems of education in this country. One for the working class, mostly black and coloured children who end up functionally illiterate and the other is for a middle class minority across the race groups who spew forth the queen’s English and send their children to extra classes to speak isiZulu or seSotho as a token of how sorry they are about their linguistic limitations. Until this parallel system of education offends us, we are yet to solve the language problem in the education system. Parents who think that their children should be taught in English instead of their mother tongue will continue to make ill-informed decisions about their children’s education and what language they ought to be taught in because they lack the social capital to make lasting and meaningful decisions for their children’s education.

What we really need to consider when we talk about the obsession with English is that English (and thanks to Apartheid, Afrikaans as well) have social capital. Those who are making money and producing knowledge are doing so in contexts where they are not required to come face to face with their monolingualism. They do not have to navigate in spaces that demand that they speak another language because they have the social capital which gives them power to control the use of language in any space. The Afrikaans question is still an interesting one that hasn’t been seriously considered but similar conclusions can be made that it is also a language of power. The problem with English is that it renders others powerless when it comes to communicating, and this depends on context. When people visit banks, the train station, shops, the use of English all around them is a reminder of who is in charge, rather than an open invitation for people to embrace English.

Writing about  the “obsession with English” confirms rather than questions the hegemony of English and that is nothing to be proud of in a country with 11 official  languages. I judge monolinguals. People should be embarrassed that they can only communicate with every person they meet on their personal terms. This is an example of language prejudice which is second cousins with white supremacy. When English/Afrikaans monolinguals refuse to get out of their comfort zone, often  smiling sheepishly everytime they fumble through greetings in isiZulu or isiXhosa, they  ought to deal with their own limitations, but thanks to the history of white supremacy, the person who speaks English with a “black or coloured” accent is likely to be apologetic when they make the language shift to speak to a monolingual English/Afrikaans speaker.

We marvel and clap for white people who can speak another African language as though they are doing something extraordinary forgetting that, that is the way it should be. If people consider themselves South Africans, Africans and citizens of the world, the practice of immersing yourself in someone else’s language should be an imperative. Monoligualism must become a myth.

The scourge of the single-mother

As a teacher I have come to appreciate some of the challenges that teenagers have to face: teenage pregnancy, drug-use, sex education in relation to the myths they hear from friends! All these ills are often clumped under  the portmanteau word: peer-pressure. Beyond these challenges, access to quality education and opportunities that will ward off poverty also form part of the teenage-question. In truth, the list is endless.

What is also often included in the list of the many social ills that plague young people is the question of family structures. For many working class teens the prospect of being in a child-headed home is a real possibility or a home where the mother is the primary care-giver, raising a child (or children) alone. As someone who was raised by a mother who opted for divorce and a grandmother who raised six children alone, I am often uncomfortable when single-mothers are lumped into the list of social ills that I’ve listed above.

My purpose is not to glorify the experience of single mothers as I have no doubt that it is often (not always) circumstances beyond many women’s control that leads them to a place where they are left with the responsibility of raising children without the assumed extra help of the father or a father-figure. I have also been surprised by friends (who happen to be white) who have spoken about being single-mothers. The one shared how she opted to be a single-mother because she was financially independent enough to do so and another said she would opt to be a single-mother if she felt ready to have a child whether or not she’s in a relationship.

I’d like to question how it is that we continue to add single-mothers to the list of social ills. The truth is, the reality of being a single-mother and the extent of the hardships one faces are closely related to a woman’s social class. The reality of raising a child or children alone without the expected help of a father, is different for a middle class woman than for a working class woman. The middle-class woman has resources the poorer woman does not have and the poorer woman is often called in to be the child-minder for the wealthier woman who can afford to pay someone to help look after her child.

My other concern is that the focus on the poor, single-mother should rather shift to the harsh reality that renders the lives of poor women an eternal hardship. Poverty. Together with poverty, the obsession with the idea of the nuclear family means that women are a problem unless they conform to the social structure of family where there ought to be a father figure in the home. Where a man or father figure is absent in a home, we refer to this as a broken home (but if a man is in a position where he raises children alone, he is the hero).

If we consider the reality of many working class black families, the family unit has never been prioritised. Many working class women have never been “kept” women who stay at home and look after the children. They have mostly been working mothers who have been in exploitative working environments without the benefits to support child care (When my aunt had her first child in the 1970s she was working in a factory. She did not have maternity leave and she was back at work the day after she gave birth to my cousin). Fathers, brothers and uncles were migrant labourers who could not be in the home to help raise the children. 

And this form of family life in the black community still exists where work opportunities do not allow working class men and women to fully support their families either financially or with their physical presence.

The single-mother question often brings into light the question of what kind of children does a single-mother raise? The perception is often that single-mothers cannot raise boys who will become “real” men and their daughters will become women who are too independent with “daddy issues” and will therefore seek attention from men because they have never received attention from their fathers. These are negative perceptions about what it means to raise children as a single-mother.

We need to recognise that whether a woman chooses to be a single mother or not, she has the right to be given the space and the rights to raise her children in a society that does not damn her for not conforming to the heteronormative idea of what is means to be a mother. We all have taken-for-granted ideas about what it means to be a mother and a father without thinking about the role of the extended family as well as the role of more supportive networks that woman may have when they are single-mothers. These networks may be informal or formal but they must allow us to recognise that single-mothering is a legitimate form of parenting.

R50 000 and homelessness

Last week Sunday I visited SA National Gallery in town. The current exhibition, Umhlaba commemorates the Land Act of 1913. I find it a strange thing to refer to the process of remembering the Land Act as a commemoration. I have always thought that commemorations are meant to celebrate rather than draw memories back into a dark past that still lives with us today.

A week before visiting this exhibition Mama had called me telling me about the new tv she had acquired. My mother is unemployed (and has been since I was 7 years old and thus depends on my sisters and I for support).I asked her where she got the money from and she told me my Grandmother's claim from the land commission had finally come and the money was divided amongst her and her sisters. I was seething with anger. Initially I thought I was angry because she had bought a tv and some clothes for her granddaughter, my niece, and had decided to save very little of the money she had received. But this is not the reason for my anger.

After seeing the exhibition I realised that I wasn't angry about my mother's foolish extravagance with the lump sum of money they had received, but rather I was enraged at the futility of this idea of land restoration. I calculated that my mother and her sisters received about R50 000. The R50 000 my mother and her sisters received is now a distant memory for each of them as they spent it on household appliances and buying something for their children and grandchildren. What the R50 000 will never do is restore the dignity my grandmother lost during apartheid simply because she was a black women, a single black mother with too many children. A problem for apartheid South Africa.

Two weeks before my gran passed away we had the longest chat I would ever have with her. It was our last conversation and I clung onto each word because I secretly knew the opportunity would never be afforded to me again. We spoke about many things. She also gave me a copy of her reference book, her dompas. We spoke about her experience of moving to Mdanstane in the winter of the 1960s and arriving to a small house that was not conducive to inhabit given the winter chill. She had been removed from an area close to town to Mdanstane, where she would have to commute many miles in order to get to work. When she told me the story I realised how she was still wounded by the experience. My gran had a macabre sense of humour and she often laughed things off easily, but there was no mirth in her voice when she told me about being forcibly removed from her home.

And all she was given posthumously was R50 000. It isn't about the money and it will never be about the money. People might be given financial compensation for the land they lost during apartheid or if they are lucky enough they might get some land back, but they will never be given back the dignity they lost when they became homeless in a country they knew as home. How do you compensate a nation of people whose families will always carry the burden of homelessness because that is the legacy apartheid laws left for them: pass books and homelessness?

My father is still in the midst of his land claim case for his family. Both my parents have been embroiled in land claims and one would think that that would make me happy. It doesn't. It is a cruel reminder of my own homelessness. If my parents have no sense of ownership (in the form of land or a homestead) in this country then I too am homeless and R50 000 will not give me a home. It has give my niece new shoes and my mother, hours of entertainment from her new tv connected to DSTV.

The absurdity of the Rainbow nation

1994. I was in Grade 1. New grade in a new school in the new South Africa. I was one of the throngs of black children whose parents had decided to enroll into former white schools which started integrating in the late 1980s and early 1990s, “Model C schools”. I was the only black child in the Sub A classroom .There were four  Sub A classes in the school and the other three classes had an equally dubious representation of black learners in each classroom. Thus, in 1994 when the promise of the rainbow nation was being bandied about, my angst about integration began to take root in my psyche (and reasons for being the only black person in the class will be a conversation for another day).

I realise that across the country there are many black people who can share their experience of being the only black person in a sea of white faces, the proverbial or literal “black at the dinner table”. Whenever I find myself in a situation where I am the “only black at the dinner table” (proverbial or literal) I am often led back to Steve Bantu Biko’s work, I write what I like.  I’m a late bloomer when it comes to Black Consciousness (BC) and my level of consciousness ebbs and flows. Because BC has also been monopolised by Mngxitama’s anger and vitriol rather than critical engagement with the relevance of BC in the new South Africa, the recent furore related to Andile Mngxitama’s response to Jared Sacks’ article (Biko would not vote for Ramphele) was an opportunity where my BC began to flow again.

As a product of a Eurocentric, former white educational institutions, I was once upon a time very quick to embrace non-racialism (that race should no longer be used as a marker to understand our experiences). I’ve been living in Cape Town for over a year and I have come face to face with the politics of being black in the new South Africa the same way I did when I was in Sub A in 1994. As someone who teaches young people who have been labelled as the “born-free” generation I am skeptical of non-racialism. At some point there needs to be an acceptance that the rainbow nation does not exist. The nexus between race and class highlights the complexity of simply wanting to be “over race”. The income disparity— which highlights which race is doing well and which isn’t creates a further cleavage between people rather than the wonderful and awe-inspiring image of a rainbow where all the colours come together  to form a unified image that leaves people with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

A few weeks ago I watched a documentary about Orania. The story was focusing on self-governing state that still exists in South Africa. The audience comprised largely of white people (I think I counted less than five black in the audience). While watching the documentary I considered how most of the people in the audience would probably be appalled by the idea of Orania. There were moments of mirth in the documentary with awkward laughter from the audience and I wondered, “why are we laughing at this ludicrous idea?”. There are people in this country who are convinced that black and white people cannot and should not live alongside each other. I was also left with a thought I couldn’t fully articulate (nor can I do so now) that there are many Oranias in South Africa. There are many people who have been raised, educated and socialized with people who think, look and sound exactly as they do. They experience diversity through the warped version of popular media and the stereotypes they are fed about other people who do not come from their communities. This is dangerous for everyone and most of the focus has been on the dangers of spaces that protect “white privilege” where many White South Africans grow up in a world of privilege cocooned from other realities throughout their lives unless they are forced to confront the world around them. When we think of spaces that have protected white privilege we seldom think of what the alternative has been for Black, Coloured or Indian who have not made it up the middle class ladder of success.

We know that the idea of integration, reconciliation and the rainbow nation are a blemish in South Africa’s democracy. So what now?  We should begin by discouraging people who say “we need to get over race” as a way of moving away from the need to speak about race. It seems only comedians are willing to engage with the race issue (which has limitations of its own). Slavery happened many decades ago but Americans have not forgotten about it. The Holocaust happened and we dare not forget that. Apartheid supposedly ended almost two decades but in South Africa we lambaste anyone who wants to raise the “race issue”. Error! We should know better especially because we dare not forget the injustices that happened in other countries, but when it’s too close to home, we invoke amnesia or ignorance, especially for those born post-1994.

Biko’s words ring still ring true to me: “Does this mean I am against integration? If by integration you understand a breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and behavior set up and maintained by whites, then YES I am against it. I am against the superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes the white a perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that)… I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people”.

The idea about integration needs to be revisited. Who are we integrating and for what purpose? The public and political failure of integration brings into question what happens in people’s personal and private lives. What happens when we are not in public without the judgement of any gaze? Do we seriously consider our own consciousness and what it means to have certain privileges or no privileges at all? I’m not one to re-imagine a South African consciousness as Dr Mamphela Ramphele would have us vote for. It seems to me that it might be another of form of glazing over the complexities in South Africa. Like Koketso Moeti, I am of the opinion that the illusion of the “Rainbow Nation”  must come to an end if we are to see the reality of this country for what it is. Harsh, complex and uncomfortable.

 

 

One down, three to go!

Another term is over! I always pinch my self at the end of the term because yet again, I've suprised myself by making it through another busy term.

Sadly, the holiday is too short. I'm being ambitious by taking home some marking with me. It would be foolish to begin term two with marking from the previous term. We already have assignments and tests lined up for the first week of term. Second term is my least favourite term because of exams and all the behavioural problems established in the first term will continue. There's no sense of a new beginning but I get the feeling kids will be gatvol  with school as early as the first week.

We have assembly twice a week. In each assembly meeting there's a section called "devotions". Unlike the prayers and hymns we sang and recited when I was in school, staff and pupils have to share something enlightening in order to get people to think about something. Christian staff members share some lessons from the Bible, others share a poem or an inspiring story. Last year I read from the Bill of Rights from the Constitution. My turn to do devotions was close to Human Rights day so I thought it apt to read from the Constitution and ask a learner to share what they think about Human Rights Day.

I'm a little stumped this time around because I have to say something in the first assembly of the term. There's the obvious pressure of saying something about working hard because it's an exam term (my worst nightmare). If anyone has any ideas for what I could share next term, please leave a comment below. I promise I'll reference your contribution during the assembly. It could be a video, an interesting short story a poem etc.

Here's to a week's holiday!

On being a writing teacher

It's near the end of first term. I have marked nearly 500 assignments given to me by the four English classes I teach as well as the lone Social Science Grade 8 class (over 150 students in total). I have survived the extra hours spent with debating trips and going to watch evening plays (coming home at 9pm or later) and tagging along to the Grade 8 camp (with wonderful colleagues and spirited teenagers). I have played "mother", been  a shoulder to cry on more than once, trying to comfort teary teenagers who come into my classroom or simply welcome my hugs when I've noticed they need a good cry. I am exhausted.

The marking required me to pore over was some creative writing. I had to mark stories and essays. Some were brilliant and thought provoking. Others made me wonder whether I've done a good job as an English teacher this term. While reading the stories I realised  I wish I had more time to write stories.

Telling a story and sharing it with others is akin to opening up one's emotions, taking a risk and showing the rest of the world that which has been created in the mind. I have always been less confident when writing fiction. I find it difficult crafting characters and recreating the characters in the story. My students are equally daunted by the task of writing. Forming stories and exposing what one thinks on paper is not an easy process. My kids do not know how to edit their work. They make careless errors with words they know how to spell. They do not follow instructions. And most of the Grade 8s don't know how to write a fairy tale.

As a writing teacher and a blogger I have often wondered how to change this in my kids: how can I make writing a valuable exercise for them to enjoy in order for them to see an improvement in their work? I have developed an intense hatred for teaching grammar. I don't see the link between teaching  kids abstract rules about language (whether or not English is their mother tongue) and an improvement in their engagement with reading and writing in English. I am of the belief that if kids read more, their writing would improve because they would (unconsciously) want to emulate the kind of writing they see in their books. I was taught English grammar until I was in Grade 7. In high school I remember a few grammar lessons and I didn't understand their purpose. In high school my English teacher would give us a module that we were required to use in our own time to teach ourselves the grammar. I became a better writer not because of grammar but because I was reading more. I was never taught grammar in isiXhosa but I know how to speak, read and write isiXHosa and that's mostly because I started reading isiXhosa (and isiXhosa has easier phonetics to understand)

 I wish this could be the case with the kids I teach. My negative attitude towards teaching grammar means that I'm a horrible teacher where grammar is concerned. I confuse the kids and myself while trying to pretend that I know what I'm talking about. I apologise to all my students at the beginning of every language lesson as though I'm preparing them for a torturous hour of their lives.

However, the truth is, many of my kids have no desire to read anything other than the scrapings they pick up from time to time. Where they do try to emulate writers, their writing becomes a regurgitation of the Americanisms they hear on tv or read in the teen literature.

I don't know how to change my attitude towards teaching grammar. My only strategy has been to ask my colleague-friends to teach my classes grammar and we can swap lessons. I have no desire for understanding nor appreciating transitive and intransitive verbs. When kids speak, they do not stop and consider whether they are parsing correctly. Granted, language rules are important for explaining why certain ways of speaking and writing are not allowed, but I'm not convinced that teaching grammar is the only way to do so.

I have survived the first term of my second year as a teacher in spite of my horrible language lessons and the mountains of marking I have been buried under. Now I'm counting down the days until the end of the term...less than 10 teaching days, phew! Did I mention that I am exhausted?

Teaching is not for the faint-hearted

From time to time my job as a teacher reminds me how naive I was in becoming a teacher. Today was one of those days. What started off as a normal day began to spiral out of control at 10am. My first lesson was with the Grade 8s-my favourite class. The lesson unfolded as I had hoped with no suprises.

It was a small whisper that jolted me into reality. One of the girls came to me whispering that she needed to tell me something. She isn't the shy type so I was confused by her approach. I listened carefully as she told me "Ma'am, X has dagga in his blazer."

I didn't know whether I should believe her or not so I carried on with the lesson by walking around the classroom checking work and making comments until I walked up to X's table. I asked him if I could chat to him outside. While he stood up looking confused I leaned over and took his blazer before he could. While walking to the door I felt him try to tug the blazer from my hand. As we stood outside I started searching the blazer casually but X tried to grab the blazer from me. We started playing tug of war with his blazer and X's voice took on a pitch I had never heard him use, considering I hardly heard him speak up in class throughout most of last year when I taught him English.

A bit of context about X before the rest of the story unfolds: X walked into my class last year and moved my heart. He looked sad most of the time. He had a face that belonged to a baby, a gait that belonged to a toddler and dark skin. He was an easy target for bullying. He was quiet. The kind of quiet that is unnerving in a classroom. After a few weeks into the first term I asked him to sit in the front of the classroom rather than with the rest of the boys in the class. He wasn't as smart nor as sharp as the other boys who formed a pack I referred to as "The fearsome five". I had all the naughty Grade 8 boys in my class and on the periphery was X yearning to be accepted by the crew. As the year unfolded I watched how he changed from being a quiet boy whose presence unnerved me and he became a ball of anger. He created a wall around himself and his only weapon was his foul mouth. He became rude and belligerent. I heard him use words that made me blush. He tried to defend himself from the barrage of insults from "the fearsome five" by retorting with harsh insults while I tried to teach.

My only solution was to call him aside. I tried talking to him about his behaviour. I did most of the talking because in a teacher's presence he became a scared mouse. I didn't get through to him. I knew he was going to fail the grade and end up in my class again. I tried to intervene with " the fearsome five" as well but they became a hopeless cause and the reason for most of my angst last year.

I was partly relieved when X walked into my Grade 8 English class again this year. I tried to encourage him so that he would see this year as a second chance. I implored him not to make the same mistakes as last year but rather to speak to me when there was a problem. I sent an email to the Grade Head expressing my concern about him and I think he started visiting the school councillor. Sadly I had to watch him being taunted by the boys who had progressed into Grade 9 and I watched how he tried to befriend the new boys in his Grade 8 class. I tried to ignore the snickering his new friends made whenever I asked him to answer a question.

So when he raised his voice this morning, telling me to leave his blazer alone, I knew he had dagga in his blazer. I was stumped. I didn't have the script to deal with this kind of problem. I racked my brain for words and eventually decided to take on my mother's persona when she's angry. I spoke softly asking him questions I already knew the answers to. He begged me to make the problem go away by throwing the dagga away. I was crestfallen. I stammered trying to find other words to convince him that making the problem go away wasn't an option. I found myself repeating over and over again that there are consequences to his kind of foolishness. I also heard myself repeating that I cared about him and that he had to trust me. I don't know why I said that to him but eventually he calmed down and we decided that he had only two options: go to the police station at that moment or go and speak to the Grade Head. He opted for the latter. And thus he was no longer my responsibility.

The rest of my day was fuzzy. I felt like a sucker. I was sad. Given the broader context of education where dagga and bullying are the norm I realised I would never be able to cope in "the real world" of education. My strangely sheltered childhood and confusing youth have rendered my hopeless when it comes to the reality of a teenage life. Drugs, bullying, experimenting and trying to fit in are what make the teenage experience. But when it happens to a child like X I have to wonder, is he simply being a teenager or is this a cry for help? Am I simply navel-gazing or is there something that could have been done to help him make better choices?

Today I was faint-hearted. And the faint-heartedness will remain as there are many children like X, trying to make sense of the world and making stupid mistakes along the way.