Perhaps then peace will finally prevail in that blighted land. Upset by the falling pass rate for impoverished students, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa exhorted educators to stop blaming apartheid and either get the job done or quit. In a Mar. 12 article in the San Francisco Examiner Kathy Chenault reported that despite a 23-percent increase in provincial government spending in South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the student failure rate rose from 42 percent to 51.1 percent, prompting Mbeki's statements. Authorities point to inadequate teacher training and poor discipline, including allowing students to cut classes. But others have cited social problems underlying the failure of students to perform.
Students come to school poorly fed and from broken families with no books at home.
President Mbeki, understands as do U.S. officials that improved schools set the foundation for economic development. But how to improve schools is one of the most exasperating problems of our times. The U.S. offers no models for solving the problems after three decades of frenetic school reforms. Even the best reforms seem only capable of narrowing the gap a tiny fraction between poor urban students and their wealthier counterparts in the suburbs. Writing in the Jan. 16 New York Times Magazine, James Traub makes a persuasive argument that disadvantaged students will do poorly in school because reforms don't get at real problems that influence their performance.