EDUCATION
MICHAEL MORRIS: The growing hunger for better schooling is a key social trend
Enrolment at independent schools has risen by 130% since 2000 against a mere 6% at public schools
With characteristic flair, historian Bill Nasson responded some years ago to a request for a pithy quote for a poster on the history sessions at the Franschhoek Literary Festival with the winning one-liner: irony is the enema of history. And, heaven knows, much in historical sense making is hard to stomach and begs for purgative relief. The same is often true of reading the immediately unfolding past — the present, by another name — where telling the good from the garbage requires paying careful attention to the data, seeming contradictions and evidence of perhaps inconceivable trends in the making. Not accidentally, somehow, it was Nasson who used his inaugural lecture at the University of Stellenbosch in 2010 to test assumptions about SA’s 20th century "abnormality", cautioning his audience to acknowledge that "familiar apartheid truths" were accompanied by others that remained true "even if they are unfamiliar". Apartheid with its "devastating long-term consequences" was, of cour...
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