Another year...another bunch of idiots

SO ANOTHER YEAR has passed and I am worried. I am worried about the state of the country's education system and the fact that yet another couple of thousand uneducated, unskilled and - by many accounts - lazy idiots have been dumped into society.

Where will these people go? What are they going to do? How many of them will turn to crime and rape and plunder in an already fatigued nation that would just like some peace and quiet for a change?

It is surely a sad indictment of a very dysfunctional system if, after 12 years of schooling, almost half of the country's learners could not muster up the brain power to achieve the pitiful 30% required to pass a subject. And the number that did "pass" is dwindling every year.

But perhaps it is not only the education system that is too blame, perhaps the very bunch of losers who can't even bring themselves to score three out of 10 should be looked at. But perhaps that would mean having to ask some hard questions of the population. Perhaps that's a picture too horrible to contemplate...

Regardless, what is 30% to pass a subject, anyway? What can an individual, who only scraped through on vaguely knowing about a third of his subject matter, contribute to society?

And this brings us, of course, to that itchy spot called critical skills. Don't laugh, but I recently read somewhere that government is very concerned about the amount of kids not passing maths and science. Very concerned???? It should be sh*tting bricks by now!

And where does this leave our ICT skills, which we are so desperately short of? Well, let's just put it this way, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Indian come riding over the hill.

More importantly though, where will this leave government's affirmative action policy?

Martin Czernowalow