Page 69 - CAO 25th Ann Coffee Table Book

to question your role in deep transformation of which access is just one thing.”
Prof. Jansen views our value system as one that has been lost. But how does one recreate a value system? Prof. Jansen strongly believes that children should be encouraged to succeed, and that you get back what you put in; “You can’t inculcate values. You live the values. You show up on time, you respect young people, you invest time and effort in them, and the kids will perform in relation to you; it rubs off onto the kids.”
He eschewed ‘complicated’ curricula like Outcomes Based Education (OBE) or the teaching of Mandarin in South African classrooms and ‘fancy’ tech, like tablets, in favour of simpler solutions: “Make sure the teachers show up and teach every day. Ensure there is a textbook for every subject in every class.” By getting the basics right, by doing these simple things well, Prof. Jansen believes that the rest will happen and schools will begin to change.
Furthermore, he strongly opposed introducing a
Grade 9 school-leaving certificate, which is condemning children to work at menial jobs. “Do you know what you do in the 21st century with an exit level grade nine? You wash chickens at the KFC in Braamfontein.” This is a reference to the incident of Braamfontein KFC staff using a hose to wash down uncooked poultry on an outside cement floor.
Prof. Jansen went on to draw a hard line when stating that all South African universities are not equal. He argued that a diverse range of standards for admission sustained a two-tiered (even three-tiered) system of higher education. On this point, he cited an example of admission point scores for teacher education being in the low 20s at one university, which at other universities was in the 30s. Additionally, he argued that the quality of the education between universities varies and questioned whether “those students [are] really getting the same quality of education. Are [institutions] really distributing the same opportunities?”
South Africa needs to stop offering short-term stopgaps, and rather follow Singapore’s lead of devising a 20-year plan. But where does one start? Go back to basics, from values and encouragement on a learner and student level, to real transformation and higher standards on an educational-institutional level.
Here, he called for an “increase, across the board, in the standards of entry, process (what the students learn while at university) and output (whether the standards for graduating are high enough)” – a consistently high quality of education that stretches students academically. A theory he put into practise at the University of the Free State by increasing the admissions score to 38, refusing to kowtow to pressure from the powers that be, questioning whether he had “the interest of the black child at heart” – a move that raised the UFS undergraduate pass rate to 90%.
What Prof. Jansen proposed may seem like a complete overhaul of the entire education system, as one attendee at the AGM pointed out. But to Prof. Jansen, the answer is simple, albeit long-term: “Do the basic things and the rest will happen.”
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