AFTER reading yesterday's Times, I can only conclude that things have changed since the colonial and apartheid days. We now have a multicultural society, and we need to work as one. Schools must still abide by rules just as society has to.
We have laws which we have to abide by, and they haven’t changed since colonialism. People have changed, not the laws. Not since Moses’s Ten Commandments. If one can’t work together, there’s always apartheid.
The basic rules at schools should be:
Neat hair, blazers to be worn at all times outside the school grounds, shoes to be polished, no smoking in school uniform, ties properly worn, no headphones on school property (or in public), no cellphones in class, etc.
No one should be prohibited from speaking one’s home language on school grounds, but only English should be spoken in class. It would be rude to speak another language in class where the lesson is been taught in English. Respect for the teachers should be paramount. Schools should be run on parliamentary standards where teachers and prefects act as speakers of the house.
Learners who don’t toe the line must be punished. Leave the running of the schools to the school governing bodies and the education department.
P Phillips
Cape Town