GOOD MORNING AND HOW IS THE MIND TODAY? OF ADHD, THE CRITICAL PEDAGOGY OF MR TITUS, MR JOEMAT AND MR LOOTS, AND YOUTH GANGSTERISM ON THE CAPE FLATS . During the late 70s I was privileged to have been educated by Mr Joemat (Science) and Mr TItus (Afrikaans) at a school which was generally looked down upon as one which housed troublemakers, gangsters or those who could not get into Elsies River Or Bishop Lavis high schools. Now having been the type of boy then whom some teachers probably dismissed as another Elsies River future gangster with learning difficulties currently misclassified as ADHD, I was struck by Joemat and Tituss persistent attempts to both educate and conscientise me politically as if the two things were mutually inclusive. It was Mr Titus in particular, who one day, after numerous bloody fights in the school yard, called me aside and asked me a bizarre question in Afrikaans: Wat het jy vandag geleer uit hierdie geveg? Wat kan jy vir my leer? (What did you learn today from this fight? What can you teach me about this?). Initially I looked at him defiantly, emboldened by the fact that out of all the teachers who were standing at a distance, fearful of intervening, only he, Mr Mesina, Mr Loots and Mr Joemat, had the foolish guts to approach us and ask such a stupid question in the aftermath of a battle. The boys around me who had fought by my side also seemed expect an answer to the question as if I had been the one who had started the fight with them blindly following. Being someone whom my peers often described as - hy is hettie op sy bek geval nie - I ventured to answer. Needless to say but suffice it to emphasise, I stumbled hopelessly but they continued to ask non-judgemental probing questions as if in a classroom. I retreated humbly and orderly with the ounse that day, deeply disturbed that I was usually quite adept at explaining others actions, but could not explain my own. As Mr Titus would sometimes say : Slim vang sy eie baas. My educational encounters with teachers such as Mr Toby Titus (Afrikaans), Mr Paul Joemat (Science) and Mr Loots (English) both in and outside the classroom transformed me from a problem child whom they refused to engage as such, into the teacher, political activist, MK soldier and civil servant I became. I now realise that Tituss question, which required both critical self reflection in everything one does and his acknowledgement that he could also learn from us despite adversarial situations, was not cynical or snide. Mr Titus, like Joemat and Loots, were true educators in the way they related to students, in the sense that PAULO FREIRE meant it when he describes what he calls democratic educators : The difference between the educator and the student is a phenomenon involving a certain tension, which is, after all, the same tension that exists between theory and practice, between authority and freedom, and perhaps between yesterday and today. When educators are conscious of this tension and this difference, they must be constantly alert to not let these differences become antagonistic. What we have to do is to live each day with the learners and cope with this tension between us - a tension that is reconcilable. Recognizing this reconcilable, and not antagonistic tension, qualifies us as democratic educators, and not elitist authoritarians. As for my ADHD and problem child label; can you imagine what would have happened if my teachers treated it like a learning disability which only medication and not mindful teaching could address? Well, I meet examples of some of these troubled geniuses who were not so lucky as I was everyday in the course of my work as a police officer on the streets of the Cape Flats. I think some of you call them gangsters.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:13:02 +0000
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