Awareness is the first step of being concerned, but it is step Zero

My excitement about the Minister's awareness, should be seen in the light of happenings before this moment.  For years, in conversations with senior people in education, they all decided 'not to see', or more appropriately, not to be concerned about what was clearly visible from the education data collected locally and in international studies - the rapid decline of our education system.  The key thing about 'becoming aware' is that you can't go back to 'being unaware', since awareness is not a 'discovery by the head', but rather a 'discovery by the heart'.  Most times, you can fool yourself through the act of denial when your head (mind) sees something, but this does not happen when you start seeing things 'through the eyes of your heart' - when you allow yourself to care about others (to care about more than just yourself).

Obviously, this is a dangerous experience to go through, and especially if you are in a political position where decision-making is mostly not informed by the 'right decision', but by the 'convenient decision' (sometimes called the 'strategic decision', which is just another name for a decision which is in your personal/group interest).  This awakening is prevalent in the Minister's announcement on public television that her intervention team to the Eastern Cape (to turn around the dismal state of affairs in education) has been prevented by the local people to do their job.  In her own words, she announced that she will have to 'remove the officials in the provincial education department who are preventing the team from doing their job'.  Making such statement during a year just before some major political events is no 'convenient decision' - we have to see this decision for what it is.

So, the road of transforming our education system will need to go through all the different steps in order to achieve the required change, namely Awareness, Informational, Personal, Management, Consequence, Collaboration and Refocusing.  We dare not allow this process to be short circuit by processes that will land us up at point 'Unaware/Unconcerned', and not point Zero (Awareness).  Remember, that step (0) zero of Awareness is only a decision away from be Unaware, and therefore still needs to be followed up with step 1 - Informational (this is where the recent Annual National Assessment and all other research data could be used in a productive way), step 2 - Personal (this is taking up a position to improve education, event if you have to challenge those who have been suffocating the system), step 3 - Management (putting a system in place that will gather and generate the relevant and appropriate data that will assist the improvement process), step 4 - Consequence (when you consider what will be the impact of this decision on your future and on the education system), step 5 - Collaboration (choosing the right partners and allies to ensure that this improvement process becomes a reality), step 6 - Refocusing (ensuring that we never slide back to the current state of chaos and dysfunctionality at this grand scale).  These steps were taking from the work of Hall and Loucks (1979), which is called the Stages of Concern Theory.  It is an important debate we need to engage in, since the current debate of "me, me" and "I want this, I am entitle to it" is slowly killing our society.  And this is not the way it always have been ... NO!  Think about those who were prepared to sacrifice they life, so that others can have a decent life, a better life.

Why was it important for me to list the steps above?  It is for us to realise that, if the Minister decides to pursue her intention of making a difference in education, she will need our support through all the subsequent steps, and that she should know that she can rely (call) on us when needed.  She must start networking beyond the narrow political, ministerial and departmental circles ... she needs a community and societal approach to this crisis.

Are you in?

Awareness is the first step to Change

I had the honour of being a speaker at an education conference on Thursday (11 August 2011) in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, where the Minister of Basic Education was also a speaker.  Unlike the normal protocol process, I was given an opportunity to speak before the Minister, and therefore she had to listen to what I had to say.  In total astonishment, during my deliberations and when it was her speaking time, she agreed with the sentiment raised that our education system is in a crisis. In fact, she repeated this statement more than once, and sometimes called it a "major, major crisis".  It was such a delight to hear her speaking mostly 'not from the words on the speech page' but rather 'from her heart'.  I certainly believe that she has the commitment to change our current education crisis, and therefore I have decided to work with her as far as she finds my work (turning around dysfunctional and under-performing schools) useful.


The times we find ourselves in are calling for people who are brave and selfless enough to stand up and be counted.  Our children are desperately in need of a significant amount of adults in education who are prepared to serve education rather than 'taking for themselves' what is in the offering.  They need adults in education who are not prepared to sacrifice the interest of the children of South Africa, in exchange for their short-term, material gains that might go up in flames soon as seen in other countries in the world.  They need you and me to focus on 'giving' instead of just 'taking' from education.


Are you up for it?  Let me know what you think of such an 'eduction movement'.