Fees must fall and free education – an attitude problem for South Africans?

Being a non-student and also a non-student parent I must say that since the beginning of the #FeesMustFall protest movement, October 2015, I was not sure where I stand. Am I for the students or am I for the management?

What I am sure of is:

It started as a protest to an increase in university fees and now it is a protest for free education

Free education for all, the poor and the rich, scholars and students

The protest goes further than a rise in fees. It is also a lack of transformation and racial inequality for the rainbow nation

Unnecessary violence, arrests, burning of building and educational material and interruption of teaching is taking place

Government finds themselves between a rock and a hard place as government funding does not allow for free education

Give the perfect gift to a child, give him education! It seems that in South Africa this is easier said than done.

Education might be the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction at school or university but for me it goes so much further. It is process of inviting truth, the cultivation of learning, the forming of relationships, the start of team work, a time for discovering, the learning of the meaning of sharing but most of all, it is time to have fun!

Shock was I to hear that a student, of a single parent, in a local high school was not allowed to take part in the matric farewell dance due to outstanding school fees. Is this what education has become?
Without positive attitudes and perceptions from both educational personnel and learners, scholars and students, education in South Africa has very little chance to succeed.

And so I am left with a lot of question;

Why now, 21 years after South Africa’s first democratic election and the so call “death of apartheid”?

Why protest flames up at the end of each year?

Why violence?

Why are there no serious attempts to put an end to it?

Are we soon to seen expats being replaced by “exstud”?

And the golden question, what will the end result be?

Without positive attitudes and perceptions from both educational personnel and learners, scholars and students, education in South Africa has very little chance to succeed.

Now I know, I am for the right attitude in education!