The children miss out on mediated learning experiences and therefore fail to develop the cognitive equipment to use in new learning situations. Consequently, education of the San children faces many problems. Among these is the high percentage of children who must repeat first grade, once or even twice. Together with an older age at enrollment, this causes great age differences within classrooms. Moreover, there is a high dropout rate.
Many children leave school before numeracy or basic literacy is achieved.
Teachers report that the children have great difficulty acquiring the Afrikaans language and that they seldom give responses even when asked direct questions. In addition, nine other people participated, among whom were four teachers from black and mixed schools elsewhere, two subject advisors, two educational consultants, and a psychologist from Namibia. For the teachers of the San school, we took extra time to deal with the role of cultural transmission in the development of cognition, with mediation in its culturally different appearances, and to prepare and supervise the implementation of the program. Experiences Discussing the role of culture in cognitive development brought us to exchange and discuss cultural commonalities and differences. This appeared to be very useful in a situation such as the South African educational system where so many cultures meet.