Twenty years of Model C

It is now twenty years since"Model C" was forced on formerly "white" schools in South Africa, and we still haven't heard the end of it.

Two years later apartheid officially ended, democratic elections were held, and one would have thought that Model C schools, a last-ditch attempt to retain a vestige of apartheid in the former white schools, would have been swept into the dustbin of history, never to be heard of again.

But instead we hear of them quite frequently, and people speak of "Model Cs" and Model C accents", so that instead of being seen as the last twitches of a dying monster, Model C continues, undead, like a vampire, to plague the new South Africa -- as its inventors intended, though perhaps not quite in the way that they intended.

For those who weren't around when Model C schools were introduced, perhaps a brief recap of history may be in order.

The Union of South Africa was formed, in 1910, from two British colonies and two former Boer republics, which became provinces of the Union, and education was regarded as a provincial matter. So the provinces had differing education policies, but within any province all schools followed the same syllabus, and wrote public exams (such as Junior or Senior Certificate) to the same standard. There was disparity between black and white schools, with more money spent on white schools, and white teachers being paid more, but they had the same syllabus and wrote the same exams.

Some provinces insisted on single-medium education for white pupils (either English or Afrikaans) while some allowed dual or parallel medium schools. Provinces could decide whether or not to subsidise church schools and by how much. Most church schools were subsidised.

When the National Party came to power in 1948 it took control of black schools away from the provincial governments and centralised them under the Department of Bantu Education, with a different syllabus tailored to National Party ideology. The government then established "homelands", and when these "homelands" became "independent", control of education was given to them, but only for black pupils. White pupils living in the "homelands" (or white enclaves within the "homelands") had white schools still controlled by the provinces that the homelands had formerly belonged to.

The central government later took control of Coloured and Indian education, and, with the 1983 introduction of a tricameral parliament, took white education away from the provinces as well, placing it under the House of Assembly, the white section of parliament (the others were the House of Representatives, for Coloureds, and the House of Delegates for Indians, but even together they could not outnumber the House of Assembly, so whites remained firmly in control).

So white education became a white "own affair" under the House of Assembly, and all was well in the apartheid heaven that the Nats had created, except that the few remaining church schools (that had not been nationalised at the time of Bantu Education) were no longer anybody's "own affair" and began to admit children of all races.

And then in 1990 the De Klerk government released jailed opposition leaders and unbanned opposition parties. The writing was on the wall. Democracy was coming, and soon all these white "own affairs" schools would come under the control of a non-racial parliament. How to preserve the little bit of "own affairs" apartheid heaven from what was still seen by many in the NP government as the "total onslaught"?

So they came up with a crafty plan. Democracy was beginning to become politically correct, so let's give the parents a say in the schools. So they decided to hold referendums of parents at each school, and presented them with four Models -- A, B, C, and D. If a majority of 90% of the parents in a school decided in an 80% poll to adopt one of the models, then they could have it.

Model A was basically the status quo. An all white school run (and largely paid for) by the House of Assembly own affairs. Model B was similar, except that the school could decide its own admission policy. That meant that if the governing body of the school decided to admit pupils of all races, it could do so.

Model C was essentially privatisation. The school would become a private school, controlling its own admission policy, and would become responsible for upkeep of all the buildings and property as well. There would be a subsidy for teachers, but not to cover all maintenance. Model D was basically one for special needs schools.

In some posh white suburbs the richer parents were attracted to Model C, which seemed to them to be a way of getting a private school on the cheap. Among the less rich, it looked as though in Model C the government was saying, in effect, "if you want black kids in your school, you must pay for it".

The school our children went to, Clapham High School, voted overwhelmingly for Model B. Twice. Over 90% of the parents voted for it. The first time, in February 1991, it just fell short of the necessary 80% poll. So they voted again in September 1991, and made an effort to get all the parents to vote, and well over 90% again voted for Model B.

And a month or two later the school was informed by the government that it would become Model C, which the parents had rejected by an overwhelming majority of votes -- twice.

It was a case of "You will be privatised, whether you want to or not".

Perhaps that was a punishment for wanting to admit pupils of all races, and rejecting the apartheid dream.

And two years later the apartheid dream (which was a nightmare for most people) ended anyway.

Quite a number of parents from different schools held meetings to discuss ways in which Model C could be resisted, but in the end nothing came of them.

But Clapham High School became a Model B school in 1992, and on the 8th of January of that year the first black pupils came to the school. In 1993 it was forced to become Model C, like all the other "House of Assembly" schools. Some relations of ours were thinking of emigrating to New Zealand, and told us that it was because they had had to take out an extra mortgage on their house to pay the Model C fees.

One of the more cringeworthy moments was at a school annual general meeting, where the principal referred to "the successful integration of the formerly Model B and now Model C pupils". To refer to non-white pupils as "Model C pupils" seemed patronising in the extreme. We hoped that after the democratic elections of 1994 we would hear no more of that sort of thing.

Model C schools were introduced about 18 months before the end of apartheid, in a desperate attempt to keep apartheid alive. The song has ended, yet the malady lingers on, and on, and on, and on...

Crisis teams

The following account of a teenager being killed in a road accident highlights some strange (to me) US cultural practices, which seem to be spreading to other places, and I wonder if anthropologists or sociologists have studied them. It also illustrates one of the effects of secularisation on modern (or is it postmodern) society.

Orland girl, 16, hit by plow truck dies — Maine News — Bangor Daily News:

A paramedic who lived nearby performed CPR on the teenager until an ambulance arrived. Hayes was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor where she was pronounced dead at 11 p.m., police said.

According to Roy, speed and alcohol were not factors in the crash, and no charges were filed against Malenfant.

Hayes had been a student at Bucksport High School last year, but was being home-schooled this year. The school’s crisis team was activated and teachers informed students of the accident during an extended homeroom period Friday. School counselors were available during the school day and were busy meeting with students throughout the morning, according to Assistant Principal Dan Clifford.

What seems strange to me is that the school activated "crisis teams" and that "counselors" spent many hours meeting with students.

I could understand such activities if this were one of those incidents where a pupil went berserk and shot and killed many pupils and teachers at the school, as has happened from time to time. In such a case one could understand the need for trauma counselling for the classmates of the killers and the killed. I can understand it in a case where a mine dump falls on a school and a large proportion of the pupils are killed, and those who survive had a narrow escape.

But this accident involved an ex-pupil, and didn't even take place at the school. Why the need for the school's "crisis team" to be "activated" and for "counselors" to spend many hours with pupils?

I wonder if some of this is media-driven. In news reports of such incidents, one sometimes sees reporters asking school officials whether such counselling is being provided, and asking in a way that seems calculated to make the school authorities feel guilty if it isn't.

The report was posted on the alt.obituaries newsgroup on Usenet, and most of the people there, even the Americans, could remember no such "crisis teams" when classmates were killed in road accidents in their school days in the 1970s and 1980s.

In my own school days in the 1940s and 1950s I can remember three fellow pupils being killed in road accidents.

One, when I was in Standard I (Grade 3) at Fairmount School in Johannesburg, was a girl called Valerie, who was killed when going to Vereeniging over the weekend. I learnt about it from fellow-pupils. Her empty desk was a reminder for some days afterwards, and then the teacher rearranged the class seating. Another, Keith Littleton, a couple of classes below me, was killed when going home from school on his light motorbike. The third, George Jefferay, was in my class at school, and a friend, and he was killed a few months after we had left school, also riding a light motorbike. Crash helmets were not compulsory in those days.

In the last two cases, we went to the funerals. Keith Littleton died after a day or two in emergency care in hospital, and so the school had special prayer meetings for him. In the case of George Jefferay, I made prints of photos I had taken of him at school, and took them to his parents, whom I had not met before.

In all these cases, the concern at the school was with those who had died and their families. Instead of the school providing "counselling" for the pupils, the pupils were focusing on ways of comforting the families of those who had been killed. And also in the last two cases, a memorial service was held at the school. OK, that was a church school, and American schools are not allowed to have prayer meetings and memorial services, because of their idea of "separation of church and state".

But what happened in the case described as happening in Maine looks very much like the "establishment" of the secular religion of psychotherapy.

My own children, who went to school in the 1980s and 1990s, also experienced the loss of school mates. One was electrocuted when he was playing with some electrical appliance. Another was also killed in a road accident. My son, who was 12 at the time, was in the same Boy Scout troop, was a pallbearer at his funeral, along with the other scouts.

And why is it that "counselling" is given such priority? There seems to be a tendency to promote "victim counselling" for crime victims. I can't help feeling that a more urgent task of a "crisis team" would be to organise a collection to help be bereaved family with funeral expenses, or to help crime victims to replace what has been stolen by robbers, and in the case of death, showing solidarity by attending the funeral.

It is surely not the job of the school to provide counselling, unless, perhaps, for something that happened at the school itself.

But I get the impression that if a family lost their home in a fire or flood or some other disaster, possibly with some members of the family being killed, these schools would not seek to collect food and clothes and find shelter for the survivors, but would concentrate instead on counselling those who ought rather to have been helping. And the media will not ask whether their "crisis teams" provided those things, but rather whether they provided counselling for the other pupils. Instead of spending huge sums of money on "crisis teams", rather help the family with the medical and funeral bills. Help the victims, not the spectators.

If my computer was nicked, I'd really appreciate help from someone who would help me to recover my data. But counselling me on my loss would thrill me as much as a time-share sales talk.

That may seem like a banal note to end on, but the whole thing seems to epitomise the banality of modernity.

Two gardens

We're interested in family history and last week we went to the Mormon Family History Centre in Johannesburg to do some research in their library (details of what we found are on our family history blog).

One of the things I always enjoy when visiting there is the walk from the car park to the reading room, through a garden filled with ponts and shady trees. The ponds have goldfish in them, and it is a pleasant peaceful place, and it's cool shade is especially good in summer.

And then on alternate Sundays we go to church in Mamelodi, where we have services in a classroom at the Zakhele Primary Schooll. Outside is a vegetable garden, where the kids learn about botany and agriculture, and last Sunday it seemed in particularly good condition. It seemed to say something about the quality of the teachers and the diligence of the learners, and gives one hope for the future of education. This picture was taken from the window of the classroom where we had just held our service.



So there are two gardens, one ornamental, and the other practical and educational.