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VICTOR RITCHIE, former principal of Harold Cressy High School in Cape Town, delivered the special guest address at the Honouring Our Teachers in Their Lifetimes award ceremony by the Movement Against Illegitimate Leaders’ (MAIL) on Saturday November 9, 2024.
My task is to reflect on just a few aspects of the era in which most of us served our schools, communities and the course of education.
During the first 41 years of the life of my old school [Harold Cressy High], we worked under crude and trying conditions. But our school adhered strictly to a fundamental, inflexible, self-empowerment rule; whereby students and teachers were dissuaded from using our crude physical conditions or the oppressive political system as excuses for not delivering their best results. Excuses and the blame-game were discouraged because they tend to be immobilising and disempowering. Difficulties, problems, mistakes, failures and struggle experiences still constitute the best education for life.
We have to guard against the danger of robbing our children of one of their greatest heritages: that of struggle. Struggle experiences, especially withing a caring environment, play a significant role in compelling students to expand their mind-power.
Many of us served as members of teams that successfully implemented a special brand of quality education during the harshest and most oppressive period of the apartheid era. During this period, we had to withstand and, more importantly, counteract the relentless onslaught and debilitating effects of a government system intent on controlling the lives and minds of students and teachers. There were many occasions when we fell short of our objectives; and when we experienced setbacks. But our schools developed a resilience deriving from an inner strength which enabled the schools to benefit from adversity.
We deliberately search that seed of an equivalent benefit, which is carried in every circumstance of adversity; and we managed to turn adversity into advantage.
Our teachers were – and must remain – the embodiment, the lifeblood, the heart-and-soul, the protectors and the implementers of a values-based education.
Our teachers were – and must remain – the embodiment, the lifeblood, the heart-and-soul, the protectors and the implementers of a values-based education. Thankfully, most of us learned early in our careers that children learn few values from what we say; but learn values mainly through careful observation of how we behave. It does not matter what is in the curriculum if the example of our lives is seen as a contradiction of what we profess!
Fundamentally and deeply entrenched in our scale of values was the cultivation of an ethos which uncompromisingly promotes the preciousness of learning time and opportunities; while also stimulating values which grow of our codes of conduct based on the mutual trust and respect emanating from a caring, empathetic environment.
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We are currently in the midst of experiencing an exponential rate of technological change; and schools must equip our students to enter with confidence this era of radical technological innovation. However, schools through sound visionary leadership should guard against the over-use of technology and thereby stifle the essential value of personalised and individualised education. There is a need for schools to champion personalised learning and not to rely too heavily on technology.
One of the world’s greatest, if not the greatest mathematicians ever, the genius Albert Einstein warned, almost 100 years ago, by saying: ‘I fear the day that that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots!’
It was the constant interaction of students and caring teachers, motivated by visionary leadership and an emphasis on personalised, individualised education that made the struggle years an amazing growth experience for all of us. Students participated and interacted more freely with teachers – inside and outside of the classroom. And, with enhanced critical thinking, the students made the tasks of teachers more demanding but, at the same time, more satisfying and fulfilling.
It is a great privilege to be associated, this afternoon, with you – the educationists – who committed and dedicated yourselves to the growth and development of students during, arguably, the most challenging period in the history of our education. You are the stalwarts who, in spite of a lifetime of noble service, still make the time to remain actively engaged in the ongoing liberatory struggle against poverty, poor health and sub-standard education.
We thank MAIL for according us recognition; and for honouring us with this grand, greatly appreciated special celebration.
