Society, you're a crazy breed

Friends and I have started to work on a project. We are not entirely sure what it is or what each of us wants from it, but at the centre is this idea: "play your part". Being in academia is a lonely place where one trades in egos and needs to constantly side-step conversations because no one ever says honestly what they think. It is also an elitist space with people often presenting papers and speaking in such a way that the average Joe is clueless as to what they are actually saying. Maybe it's only me who does not understand.

It bothers me that being 'learned' is restricted to those that can afford learning. It is not like that everywhere in the world, but here (and I am assuming in many third world countries, which South Africa is not and still is, somehow) getting a good education often seems out of reach. I am not sure if the reason people don't demand a better education is because they are uneducated ; if the government preaches better education but does nothing to improve the system in order to keep the majority of the voters dumb and clinging to the ANC's 'liberator' persona; if many are simply not interested in learning, or if the concept of education in itself is wrong.

In the gym the other day I overheard two middle-class white ladies saying that the schools had failed their children because the kids were told that they were bad at a particular subject when in effect it was just the teacher's style of transmitting the information that was wrong. I don't know. I never liked our math teacher and thus also did badly in mathematics, irrespective of going to additional classes and trying to study. I still think that trigonometry and algebra were torture. But young people should also learn that life is not handed to you on a silver platter and that the average person is not great at everything. Finding one thing you are good at is already an achievement. I mean, I know I can bake decent cakes, but beyond that who knows what my strengths are.

Anyway. Back to project no-name. It really doesn't have a name. But the idea is to change the way academia works and to make learning more horizontal instead of hierarchical. Learning doesn't stop when you finish school/university/etc. Learning never stops. And I think that is what is fundamentally wrong with the education system here: it preaches that when you complete your matric or your degree or your diploma, you will get work with that and then you have stopped learning. But in the 21st century it is no longer plausible to believe you will be employed by the same company for your entire life, or that you will find a job doing exactly what you studied. Let's see if our project can succeed in helping to change the way society thinks of education and thus play our part.

We don't need no education.

found on 9gag

Although 9gag is definitely not the most reputable source for news, this image is from the student protests in Bogotá, Colombia. For months they have been demanding free education and against proposed reforms to privatise tertiary education. For more information you can refer to the BBC's article.

This morning I was speaking to my sister about finishing my last exams next Wednesday and about thereby finishing my first degree. Since it is a BA ( Bachelor of Arts), many people dismiss it as being a degree for young ladies to find a husband and also as being useless in the market place. I know learning about post-humanism and Cartesian duality might not rake in big bucks for me in the future, and that I'll probably always be underpaid and overworked, and that finding a job will be harder than if I had studied engineering. But I am good at thinking. Not so good at math and calculations and numbers. So is it not more important to be good ( and associated with that, happy) than to be bad at your job and hating it?!

In any case, I am privileged to have studied at all, and to be able to further my education. This is a protest I would have liked to join, not students protesting about a fiesta being cancelled.

"Entitled" to rape

In last Monday's Pretoria News ( their site is currently under construction so I can't give you the direct link to the article, but if you have October 24th's paper by any chance it is on page 5 under "Study finds motive for rape worldwide") Esther Lewis reports that in South Africa, 70 % of men who have raped someone felt "entitled" to do so.

How does anyone feel entitled to harm another? ENTITLED???? How must your mind work? How can you not respect another human being enough?

Even worse, the research ( done by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative) revealed that most rapes of girls under the age of 15 and gang rapes are done out of boredom and "for fun". Raping for fun? For fun??????

The article further states that 17 % of the men that rape were raped themselves, that 45 % said their mothers were rarely at home and that 72% said their fathers weren't at home very often either. Furthermore, 3/4 of those interviewed said they had raped someone before their 20th birthday.

I was watching Special Assignment or Fokus or something on SABC once and they reported that 50% of South African children grow up without their fathers. Now I wonder if this can link to the 56 272 people that were raped between April 2010 and March 2011. That would be round 154 people per day and 6 people per hour.

The article states that boys "need to be socialised at school and community level, and taught what it meant to be a boy or man, and to gravitate away from violence". But should not a parent, a father, take responsibility for their son or daughter and teach them right from wrong? I think the high level of single-mother households and absentee fathers is partially to blame. Who are we to learn a moral code from when there is no one to teach us?

Perhaps it also depends on the level of education and the support from people around one that the child receives. My father left when I was around 11 and my mother had to find a job very quickly. However, my sister and I turned out rather well because we always knew that she was working so much to provide for us and that in turn our responsibility was to work hard at our education. One need not be rich to feel accomplished in life.

According to the article, most rapists had been exposed to childhood trauma. Does trauma define a person? Does it either bury you or make you rise above it? I don't know. Mine was not very traumatic.
But I believe there must exist a basic humanity in all of us. There must be something pure that is corrupted by circumstance. I don't understand how we cannot see each other as equal. By respecting you am I not also respecting myself?

I don't think one can blame anyone for one's own choices. I am excluding mental instabilities and psychotic problems here, but in the case of people of sound mind and body everyone is responsible for their own actions. Sure, life beats some up more than others, but ultimately, you choose your own reaction.

Rape

          Adrienne Rich

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:
he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers,
had certain ideals.
You hardly know him in his boots and silver badge,
on horseback, one hand touching his gun.

You hardly know him but you have to get to know him:
he has access to machinery that could kill you.
He and his stallion clop like warlords among the trash,
his ideals stand in the air, a frozen cloud
from between his unsmiling lips.

And so, when the time comes, you have to turn to him,
the maniac's sperm still greasing your thighs,
your mind whirling like crazy. You have to confess
to him, you are guilty of the crime
of having been forced.

And you see his blue eyes, the blue eyes of all the family
whom you used to know, grow narrow and glisten,
his hand types out the details
and he wants them all
but the hysteria in your voice pleases him best.

You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you:
he has taken down your worst moment
on a machine and filed it in a file.
He knows, or thinks he knows, how much you imagined;
he knows, or thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted.

He has access to machinery that could get you put away;
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
your details sound like a portrait of your confessor,
will you swallow, will you deny them, will you lie your way home?

Telling

I was parking the car the other day in the swanky neighbourhood next to the university ( there is no parking nearer to campus where I do not get a parking ticket, so into suburbia we go). When I got out to grab my bag from the boot, there was a black gentleman in his 50s, impeccably dressed and looking very much like someone one would like to share a whisky with. He handed me the note in the photograph and asked if I did not have any work for him. 

Situations like these make me feel completely out of place. He called me "missis" ( for non-South Africans, this is similar to "madam". I think it is a sign of respect, but in my mind is more associated with the apartheid "master/madam" oppressive form than something one would say out of a general sense of social order). Missis is bad to me. I am no one's master. Call me miss, if you have to. Or just "you". I am a lot younger, a lot less experienced in the world, I should be the one of lesser rank. 

I promised that I would pass his info onto someone if I would hear of someone who needed work done. And walked away. He continued up the road, which is lined with arches of old trees and enormous mansions, behind whose high gates expensive German cars gleam in the sunlight. I wonder how that must feel: being desperate for work, wandering a rich suburb where the inhabitants probably earn more in a year than you would in a lifetime. 

When I got home, I read the note, and again was saddened. Why? The spelling. It is my belief that a good education, where traditional knowledge is not forced down on students, but rather where the environment is one which acknowledges different forms of learning and knowing, could change the world. And here, I blame my ancestors. If they had not been so blind and full of hatred, if they had not separated people on account of skin colour, many of the older generation could have had their minds unlocked to a fascinating world where your own thoughts matter as much as those you read in books and newspapers. 

If previous generations would already have had access to a good education, perhaps the youth of today would be able to value it more. At university, I see many people who just expect their parents or the government to pay for their studies, even if they do not attend class and fail subjects. It is a privilege to learn. It is a blessing to be able to sit in classes and be taught to think for yourself. 

So when I see this man, struggling to find basic manual labour in an area where money seems to grow on trees, it bothers me. When I see his terrible spelling, while he is walking through an area where a university, a primary school and numerous high schools are situated, it bothers me. When I then see students not valuing the education they are receiving, it infuriates me.  

 It is easy to judge the previous generations for their errors, because one tells oneself one would not have stood for injustice. One tells oneself that one would have fought for equality. One tells oneself that one could never have just accepted a black and white world instead of seeing colour. But I don't know. Depending on the ideology I was raised with and whether I would accept or reject it, I don't know if I could've been a apartheid-supporter or protester. 

But I can judge the youth of now, the decisions of now, the government of now. I am not saying South Africa is going under or we are becoming like Zimbabwe or whatever, but I am saying that young people need to get their act together. They need to demand knowledge. They need to stop supporting idiots like Malema and burning down buses and classrooms. You cannot advance a society through violence and ignorance. Accept that there is much to learn, from everyone. Everyone is an expert in some region. I know language. I know music videos. But I need to call my grandmother to make jam, or ask the gardener where would the basil-plant grow best ( well, my gran with her green thumb knows that as well).

All I am saying is respect everyone you meet. Even Malema. Know that they are not stupid, they are not less than you. Know that you need to open your mind and take responsibility for your own future.

.