Dion's random ramblings

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Thanks for nothing! Led astray

The headline in The Star newspaper on Friday the 14th of November reads ANC may give OBE the chop! I wonder how many decades it will take for South Africa to recover from the Outcomes Based Education debacle - we have wasted millions of Rand and ruined the educational prospects of many South Africans.

What do you think about OBE? I think that the theory is wonderful! Heuristic learning is a good thing, but it is costly and requires far more than our educational infrastructure could cope with!
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posted by digitaldion (Dion Forster) at 7:54 PM
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4 Comments:

  • Hi Dion. I share your views.

    A mutual friend of ours said something that I will remember for a long time: "Some things can be taught, and some things need to be learnt."

    OBE or no OBE? The argument is that the old education system emphasised "teaching" people, hence the parrot-fashioned recall approach many students have adopted. I wonder if OBE does not emphasise "learning" at the expense of "teaching".

    Is there a balanced approach? Thinking back at my education, I know that there were people who were teachers and others who did the work teachers are supposed to do. Catch my drift? Needless to say, when the true teachers taught, I could not help but learn and explore further.

    Ja, broer. Ek weet nie.

    By Blogger Wessel Bentley, at 8:23 PM  

  • I agree with Wessel.

    OBE should, in theory, take away the excuse of teachers that "we taught them that but they didn't learn it", but in order to work it needs trained and competent teachers, and thagt would meen, to begin with, a massive retraining of the thousands of teachers who had been crippled for life by CNE institutions like Unisa, The priority should have been to heal the teachers first, not impose a system that they simply did not have the training to cope with.

    By Blogger Steve Hayes, at 6:36 AM  

  • Very insightful comments, thanks Wes and Steve. Wes, I like what you say about balance. That seems to resonate with me.

    By Blogger digitaldion (Dion Forster), at 11:40 AM  

  • PS, if you look closely enough you will see my 'learned' toes on the bottom right of the picture ;-) Now, that's something that no learning, teaching, or therapy can undo!

    ha ha!

    By Blogger digitaldion (Dion Forster), at 11:41 AM  

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