Lift Off

I have been in South Africa for nearly five years. Much of that time has been spent working with my wife Aletta researching South African Education. Aletta has a PhD in Science education with a background in Physics. On the other hand I seem only to be armed with an ability to see things that people in the field of education overlook and the nerve to ask questions that will sometimes stop them in their tracks. So I guess you could say that I am a 61 year old student of science, who is not afraid to be heard and make his point know. I feel it is fair to say that I have been learning and working in the field for the last 10 years. My latest project has been organizing a nationwide set of workshops for Department of Education physics subject advisers for the South African Institute of Physics a project sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology.


After compiling the research that we have done at different levels of education around the country one question from a head master had haunted me: “And what are you going to do with this research?" I felt it was a great question, but then he was a student of my wife's from years back and had been trained well.

So we started a section 21 company (non-profit) based on what we had learned and designed to support teachers. For the last several years I have been developing a plan and trying to get a deserted building from the municipality to house a resource center for a community project to support local teachers, learners and the community itself. But all my efforts produced nothing in the form of a building to house our resource center.

Two weeks ago I was taking a birthday cake to a friend at Boiphehelo (pronounced Beplelo) high school and ran into a familiar face from SS Paki, a new high school here in town. Elias was the name behind the face and he was the new head master at Boiphehelo high school. We got talking and he explained that he was taking over a school that had in many ways been neglected and the reputation of the school for pass rate was not too good. Therefore, his student population had dropped and he felt he had a lot to change to get the grades back up.

Soon Elias asked about the project I had been working on to support the schools. I explained my building problems with the municipality and the next thing I knew, Elias was suggesting that he had some extra space available in the school that was being vandalized and suggested that he would run it by his school governing body the next day and if they approved we could have one entire floor of the currently unused building. On the following Monday he called me with the good news that the body had given its approval and we were in business. I was so happy I could have kissed the man! My mind was going a hundred miles an hour as I was going from room to room and checking out the space in my own little world.

We will not be charged rent, but are expected to help out with the water and electricity bills. We must come up with money for building repairs that are really minor, door knobs with lock sets, replace about 8 toilets that are in poor repair, fix a few ceiling panels, add a little insulation and paint. We must also provide security for the building which we figure will include about 20 000 Rand worth of security fencing, an alarm system still to be estimated and we must replace some electric wiring that has been stolen. But all in all it will be much more building for far less money than what we expected to spend on the other building. It should be a win-win-win situation for us, the schools, and the community.

On Friday morning about 10 A.M., I stopped to see a woman I know about people to help clean the school, literally in minutes we had three more women in my car complete with supplies and we were headed to the school to clean the rooms. By 3 P.M. they had 5 rooms cleaned. They still need to clean the windows in those rooms and put down some floor wax, but they will be back on Monday to do more work, hopefully we will have the rooms cleaned next week.

This could only happen in South Africa, or maybe in a state of emergency somewhere else. But then maybe that is what education is here - a state of emergency.