A!: What are the most urgent steps needed to improve the education system?
JJ: The most important thing to do is to get schools to use the time given to them for instruction optimally. We know from research that one of the key reasons schools underperform is that black students in the poorest schools get only a fraction of the instructional time available in the timetable. Then you’ve got to make sure that every school has the learning materials that they need. Teacher training I think is a crucial issue. Teacher training in our country is often information-sharing. And we need to learn how to develop teachers from where they are to prepare for classroom teaching in a very systematic way. The other issue is subject-matter knowledge—in high schools, the big problem is making sure that teachers know enough maths or science or languages to begin with.
As for mother-tongue instruction, I have a completely different view from many of my colleagues. I think we should get children to learn in English as soon as possible. The entire economy and the entire higher education system are rigged in favour of English. By depriving those who can least afford it of second and third languages under some misguided sense of Africanisation, you further disadvantage them.
A!: You were appointed Rector of the University of the Free State in 2009 after a racist incident that outraged the nation. Instead of taking a punitive approach to the white male students who had humiliated black workers, you invited them to return to the campus and participate in a process of reconciliation. Nearly four years later, how would you say the UFS campus has changed?
JJ: I don’t think you should listen to me, I think you should come and see for yourself. You would find a campus in which by public acknowledgment—these are not my own words—most of our students have learned not to tolerate each other, but to embrace each other. I still firmly believe in the course we chose: even as we pursued social justice, we simultaneously pursued reconciliation. We basically said, in addition to saying sorry and paying recompense, in addition to what the courts will do, the criminal court and the civil court, we think as a university we are guilty as well, and therefore we acknowledge our own institutional complicity. And on the basis of all that we also invite you to come back, not simply to study but to make right what you did wrong so we can give you a second chance.
Educations come in many different ways. It’s got very little to do with me and everything to do with the unbelievable capacity of young people to deal with the past and also to move beyond it.
