Kader Asmal Dies

A great loss for our young democracy - one less voice of reasoning against a growing 'Confederacy of Dunces'

RIP

ps. i thought he was 72
 
kinda strange he dies just a week after standing up against the biggest threat to democracy this country has seen since the fall of apartheid dontcha think? dies of a heartattack, but he was in hospital for a stomach ailment. that seems rather, odd
 
what is weird is how everyone is raving on and on about what a great man he was during the struggle while conveniently forgetting how he almost single-handedly ****ed up the education system :mad:
 
Naks said:
what is weird is how everyone is raving on and on about what a great man he was during the struggle while conveniently forgetting how he almost single-handedly ****ed up the education system :mad:
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He didn't **** up the education system, it was already ****ed up (for the majority of South Africans). He just failed at creating a good education system for all South Africans, which, to be fair, is no easy task to be given.
He was a man with integrity who always put the people and the constitution first, which is rare in today's day. Even if he was unsuccessful with transforming education, he always did things with the best of intentions for South Africa.
RIP
 
Naks said:
what is weird is how everyone is raving on and on about what a great man he was during the struggle while conveniently forgetting how he almost single-handedly ****ed up the education system :mad:
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We had a great education system before, which sucks now, but let me break it up for you why:

Whites had the best education, with very good teachers, who themselves had a great education to be able to teach and were white themselves.
When everyone in this country were allowed equal education, that meant that 90% of the population who only had dismal Bantu Education all of a sudden were allowed the class education whites had.

Now, not all white teachers could go out into townships and teach? The teachers that taught black pupils were uneducated themselves. It was a viscous cycle of uneducated, underfunded teachers and schools teaching little to nothing to underprivileged children (majority of this country). These children grow up with useless skills, and their children to, and the cycle continues.

The legacy of Apartheid is very very real. OBE wasn't the main problem.
 
Naks said:
awesome. go tell that to the kids leaving high school who can barely read or count.
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Yes, he was awesome. I'll tell them how Naks is going to sort it all out for them. It was and is an enormous task. If you think you can do better let us know how...
 
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boramk said:
We had a great education system before, which sucks now, but let me break it up for you why:

Whites had the best education, with very good teachers, who themselves had a great education to be able to teach and were white themselves.
When everyone in this country were allowed equal education, that meant that 90% of the population who only had dismal Bantu Education all of a sudden were allowed the class education whites had.

Now, not all white teachers could go out into townships and teach? The teachers that taught black pupils were uneducated themselves. It was a viscous cycle of uneducated, underfunded teachers and schools teaching little to nothing to underprivileged children (majority of this country). These children grow up with useless skills, and their children to, and the cycle continues.

The legacy of Apartheid is very very real. OBE wasn't the main problem.
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Yep, OBE wasn't the problem, legacy education is. Non-Blacks (who had better educational systems in place during Apartheid) typically don't want to go out and teach in the townships. They still don't.

This has recently led to Black kids travelling to public schools which were predominantly White, Indian or Coloured before. It will get better over time, I think, but the current cock-up is not entirely due to OBE.
 
Granted, bantu education was bad. But adding OBE to the mix was never going to fix this, it just compounded the problem. If you were involved in the education sector you would know this.

Middle-class white kids rock up to university and cannot write proper English, cannot do mental arithmetics, cannot understand basic scientific principles, etc. Why do you think universities now have entrance exams?

The ANC mentality is to bring down the quality to the lowest common denominator, which in the long run is just detrimental to the whole country. #epicfail
 
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Naks said:
what is weird is how everyone is raving on and on about what a great man he was during the struggle while conveniently forgetting how he almost single-handedly ****ed up the education system :mad:
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You've noticed that too. For some old ANC comrades they conveniently focus on the struggle while ignoring their actions when they were in power, while it's visa versa for other ANC politicians.
 
Naks said:
what is weird is how everyone is raving on and on about what a great man he was during the struggle while conveniently forgetting how he almost single-handedly ****ed up the education system :mad:
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I was about to say the same, but you already had.

+1

By all accounts he was a man of integrity. But also seriously mistaken about economic and social policy. Yet another reminder that good intentions and integrity by themselves just aint enough. SA will take decades to get over the damage he did to education. RIP.
 
Arthur said:
I was about to say the same, but you already had.

+1

By all accounts he was a man of integrity. But also seriously mistaken about economic and social policy. Yet another reminder that good intentions and integrity by themselves just aint enough. SA will take decades to get over the damage he did to education. RIP.
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If it will take decades to overcome what he did in a few years, then why are people so convinced that we should have overcome the effects of Apartheid already?
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
If it will take decades to overcome what he did in a few years, then why are people so convinced that we should have overcome the effects of Apartheid already?
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It boggles the mind. Falling under the stupid logic that you blame others of having.
 
Looks like OBE wasn't his idea, he just inherited it: (http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/2011/06/26/asmal-s-brave-proud-legacy)

In 1999 he was appointed minister of education, where outcomes-based education had been launched by his predecessor Sibusiso Bengu the year before. By the time Asmal arrived, it was already in trouble and he wasted no time ordering a review, which confirmed its flaws. In private, he said he would scrap it if he could, but knew that politically this would be untenable because it was an ANC flagship project. So instead of getting rid of OBE, he tried to fix it, with appalling consequences for a generation of children, mainly in less well-resourced schools, who left school unable to read, write or do maths.
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Mike Hoxbig said:
If it will take decades to overcome what he did in a few years, then why are people so convinced that we should have overcome the effects of Apartheid already?
Click to expand...
Because Asmal radically altered the institutional structures. Example: He forced universities and technikons together into a scambled egg that one can't just unscramble so easily. Destruction is easier and faster than construction. Not all structures and systems from the apartheid era were structurally wrong - they were wrong because they excluded other races; the fix was simply to do away with those restrictions, which is very different from radically re-engineering the structures. By the way, it's not just blacks that were excluded. Under apartheid, whites were excluded from sectors of the economy as well. As a honkey, I could never open a cinema in Soweto, or a shop in Kathlehong, or buy a house in Lenasia.
 
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