In the book Critics of State Education, a project of the Cato Institute, George Smith surveys historical thinking on the nature and role of education from the days of Sparta through to Plato and early modern times. According to Plato: "Education is, if possible, to be, as the phrase goes, compulsory for every mother’s son, on the ground that the child is even more the property of the state than of his parents." This is the same "baby-sitter and authoritarian" spirit that fuels ANC decisions in running our education today. The only addition might be the depraved motivation behind this, namely to use education to indoctrinate children into becoming ANC sheep rather than participants in economies of the future. We spend billions of rands on education each year. Yet we are one of the worst performers in terms of quality in general and the quality of maths and science in particular. More than half of our pupils disappear before they reach matric, and only a small number manage to graduat...
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