Thuto ke Lebone

I am academically challenged! I have no degree nor have I been to a university, at least not a western style of university. I am a direct opposite of Bantu education. School to me was a place where kids are kept to pass time, especially since our parents spend their lives working for white families, and beaten hard while at it. Very few things made sense to a young boy's mind and there was really not much to be grateful for. None of the things I learnt in school have any relevance in my life.

For the life of me, I could never understand why one was compelled to take Afrikaans, History(European) and Biblical Studies! I had to do Biblical Studies from the day I started school, even in high school? So many of us actually resented education and schools.

All schools I went to were very poor, even though some teachers tried their best to make school fun. Although it is hard to have fun when there are 120 of you in the classroom. I finished matric with no sense of what exactly it is I wanted to do. Vocational guidance meant sex education to us. Most things we loved were not part of the school curricula. Sports, arts, literature, poetry and trade. Even though I love literature, english literature was really a drag. Imagine having to study Shakespearian english all the time! I always wondered why these people couldn't speak plain English.

I hated mathematics with a passion. Not that the subject was really that bad, just that the person who taught me in high school really put me off. He was proud of the fact that only about 20% of his students pass his subject! And fail we did, and badly so. And the 20% pass failed all other subjects! Out of nine subjects, failing one did not seem so bad a record. So I figured it was a good tradeoff. Unfortunately maths was compulsory, so it was a dead subject as far as I was concerned. You must read about this maths story in my biography about Botitjhere Sojence le Mafojane!

So many of us found ourselves in careers we did not even know they existed. The first time I touched a computer was in college when I was 18 years old! We became good at things that were unfulfilling to us. So we burn out pretty soon. Arts and literature were discontinued in most universities following the new "government of the people", so you study science, law, humanities or forget it. Government of the people in deed. Today black schools lack even teachers of mother tongues! That is a disgrace in a country like South Afrika where people actually speak these languages day in day out.

Add to that the fact that our parents cannot afford to send us to school. So you must start work at the first chance you get. So I guess many of us are graduates of UoL, the University of Life.