There is one thing that our generation must get right, which the generations before us got completely wrong. That is, to never ever batter the confidence of a Black child. Growing up, I remember how parents and teachers would always tear apart at children who had learning difficulties. When children were perpetually battling to do well at school, they would be humiliated beyond measure. In the townships, it was not uncommon to hear a parent, when shouting at its child for failing to obtain good marks, saying: O stlaela wena! (You are stupid). Teachers, particularly those in township schools, would also say such things to children who werent performing well. Having been an A student my whole primary and high school life, I have a distinct memory of other children being humiliated with my consent (I say consent because at times I too would join in the laughter and not stop the onslaught). Teachers would say things like: Le ditlaela lona, le phadiwa ke Malaika. The intention may have been to motivate them, but the unintended consequences was that the opposite happened. When I think back to such things, I cant help but feel pained. In our Black society, we have very little knowledge about learning difficulties, and so we dont know how to deal with children suffering from them. We just dismiss them as ditlaela (idiots) and constantly humiliate them. Parents beat up such children, teachers make them a laughing stock and we children in turn label them. In my high school we called one student DVD (Dom, Very Dom) and were heartless about how we teased her everytime we saw her test scripts. I say with conviction that while some do it because they just hate school, many Black students who drop out of school are a product of this abuse. White society does not mock such children. Maybe it is because White people have money to put such kids through special schools and resources to help them cope. But what Ive observed is that White society makes an effort to understand such kids and because of that, give them the neccessary support to overcome. When White kids cant count or spell, they are not dismissed as ditlaela like our Black society does. They are sent for medical and psychiatric evaluations. Often, we find that such kids have genuine problems like Dyslexia (reading/spelling disability), Dyscalculia (mathematics disability) or Dysgraphia (writing disability) and so on, which, when detected early, can be treated and at times, cured. Their confidence is not battered, they are given all necessary support and socialised into believing in their own capacity to be great in spite of their disability. But us, Blacks, we make their lives so difficult that they end up dropping out of school and living with permanent brokenness. Our generation must bring back the dignity of Black children who genuinely have learning disabilities. We must not do to our kids what our parents did to us. White people like David Beckham, Albert Einsten (yes, THE Einstein), Cher, Tom Cruise, Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson (yes, former PRESIDENT of the USA), Richard Branson (yes, as in MULTI-BILLIONAIRE owner of Virgin) and many others, all suffer from dyslexia. But they are succesful people today because they come from a society that helped, not condemned them. The next best scientist could be a Black child somewhere in Cofimvaba or kwaMashu, a child who suffers from dysgraphia. But they might drop out of school before completing, because some Black teacher in the township made them feel inadequate, or their parent beat them up for not knowing how to spell. We cannot raise our children like this. It is bad enough that we live in a racist society. We cant help the system batter the confidence of our children even more, by calling them ditlaela when they need special attention and support...
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 08:31:04 +0000
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