by Alex Tabisher
The Cape Argus carried a two-day coverage of a teenage girl who passed her Matric despite being pregnant. My column this week is triggered by her story. We share some affinities. She lives in Belhar, as do I. And I spent 10 years teaching in a high school in Manenberg during 1983 -1993, the really hard years just before the first free elections.
I am mindful of the rules of privacy and decorum, and I hesitate to polemicise to the point of libel or sensation. I just wish to trigger what I think is essential discourse. I write with great admiration, love and respect for this young stalwart whose story has moved me to promote a neglected cause. I hope she and her family will not harbour rancour against me.
During my decade as head of a high school, teen-age pregnancies were as common as dew. We laboured mightily to prevent all the ungodly things that went on during these years of caspirs, tear-gas and disrupted teaching days. When the dust settled, the teachers had to reconnect with those children who had destroyed the old-fashioned moral and didactic principles that made for effective tuition. The days of discipline and good behaviour on school campuses had left the building permanently.
We had to handle pregnant pupils without the tools of tolerance and human rights. Our crude morality was that one rotten apple would sully the whole barrel. The result was that these young girls were treated as pariah.
The point of my column covers the heinous inadequacies under which this young girl must now function. Looking at her subjects, one searches for the portability that will enable her to compete internationally. What is she to do with maths literacy, life science, life orientation and dramatic arts in a world that is crying for the intellectual rigour of the sciences and content-driven skills? In other words, how can our Education Department crow about results which perpetuate mediocrity and drive students towards the limited access of non-productive domain-specific arenas?
It strikes me that the choices offered to the students reflect the lack of experienced and motivated educators who were trained by teachers without actual class-room experience, compliments of the late and revered minister (Kader) Asmal. The choices are as limited as they were in my day as a high-school student in the 1950s: teacher, nurse, bus driver or office worker. Today’s dumbed-down syllabic choices provide no improvement.
Ancillary to this is the truth that this eager young lady, who wants to study further, has become a mother when she had hardly ceased being a child herself. Fortunately, she has a support system which will allow her to go to university and earn a good life for her child, who will be near-school-going age when she graduates. How many children are born into an almost no-win situation like this?
And why is there never a word about the fathers, who probably triggered this social reality before they had grown a full moustache? Do we have strategies in place to deal with this perennial dilemma?
All lives are sacred. The children born from these tenuous unions have every right to a meaningful life. Yet isn’t it significant that the Education Department only celebrates the symbols on a dubious certificate and then blithely carry on with their short-sightedness regarding the lives of the players in the dramatic reality, including that innocent and beautiful little baby?
I hesitate to reduce to the conclusion that the coverage of her story promotes a dubious bravery under fire, to wit, it’s okay to be pregnant while you are at school. We promise to publish your results. Who feeds your baby is of minor concern?
* Literally Yours is a weekly column from Cape Argus reader Alex Tabisher. He can be contacted on email by [email protected]
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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