JONATHAN JANSEN | You know it’s bad when ‘matric madness’ reaches the little ones

Every week I receive a complaint or concern from a parent, mostly strangers I have never met from the different provinces. The issues are usually the same. My child applied to four schools and not one of them had place for her. My daughter is being bullied and the principal has done nothing about it. A teacher threatened my son and now he is scared to go to school. I could not afford the school fees and now my child is prohibited from attending certain school functions.

But this week an anxious parent knocked down my door with a concern so egregious I dropped everything and decided to fight this issue with her.

A school principal had insisted that children in grades 3 and 6 should come to school during this one-week vacation in October to be drilled in languages and mathematics ahead of the provincial-wide systemic assessments. The parent dug in her heels, complained to the circuit manager, but found no relief for her argument that the little ones should not be subjected to this drilling exercise.

Why would a school put little children through the relentless pressure of preparation for systemic assessments?

For one simple reason: so that the school does not look bad in the eyes of the education department. Poor systemic results means more pressure on educators and the embarrassment of having officialdom descend on your school to pull you straight. Like mice on a treadmill spurned on to run by an electric shock up their behinds, principals and officials pound the assessment wheel mindlessly and out of the fear of failure.

What has become of us? Children at such a young age should be spared these repetitive tests especially during school holidays. It is a short week, these children should be playing outside, swimming in the ocean, hiking up the mountain, reading a book, visiting with friends and sleeping late. If mobile devices have already taken away free play from children, alongside stifling hours spent inside classrooms, why would these five days of relief have to be sacrificed for assessment preparation?

I am afraid that the pressure of ‘matric madness’ is now filtering downwards towards the lower grades and it is a matter of time before preschool children also get caught up in this degrading assessment culture.

This is madness. I can understand up to a point the pressure on grade 12 learners with the high stakes NSC (national senior certificate) examination a few weeks away, but these are little ones! We are teaching them that education is assessment, that learning is about performance, and that the free play of vacations can be sacrificed for drilling itemised questions into their heads.

What an anaemic view of education. Even within the classroom, the joys of learning have been narrowed down to memory routines and repetitive tasks. It need not be so. A friend teaches teachers how to teach mathematics using a dart board, a chess set or dominos. Another insists on taking their children into the school grounds to identify different insect species. At one school the eco-club regularly takes children on hikes through ecologically rich environments.

Most schools, however, are preoccupied with rushing through a crowded curriculum called CAPS with hardly any time to come up for air. Now, despite the exhaustion, little children must return to school to prepare for the systemics. I now advise parents, for the mental and emotional health of their children, to challenge such instructions. Children do not exist to take one assessment exercise after another to make schools look good. Little children exist to live full lives, to learn through play and to discover worlds outside of the official curriculum. They must never become automatons in this cruel world of assessment-driven education.

I am afraid that the pressure of “matric madness” is now filtering downwards towards the lower grades and it is a matter of time before preschool children also get caught up in this degrading assessment culture.

On the other side of the world, a mayoral candidate for New York City, a man with South African roots, plans to phase out gifted schools for early primary school education. I agree with Zohran Mamdani. What kind of assessment at such a young age can make definitive statements about which child is gifted and who is not? Nonsense. All children at that tender age are gifted, perhaps not in the same thing, and perhaps not evident at the same time, but it should be a crime to channel children towards smart and not so smart based on some crude assessment measure.

Let them all play music or run sprints or swim in a pool or draw birds — but goodness me, let the children loose to discover themselves through play and experimentation. Let them make mistakes, mess about in the dirt, sing false, dance awkwardly and collapse into bed with happy exhaustion.

Every provincial department of education has a responsibility to stop primary school heads from abusing this holiday period when what children need most at this young age is to discover that the most memorable of their education experiences often happens outside of the classroom.