Assignment Task:
Task:
Shortly after I took up my post as South African Ambassador to Ireland in 2001 the Holy Cross dispute occurred in Ardoyne – a part of Belfast in Northern Ireland.
Like many towns in apartheid South Africa, Ardoyne was segregated. Unlike South Africa it was not on the basis of race, but religion. Protestants lived in one area and Catholics in another.
However, Holy Cross, a Catholic primary school for girls, was situated in the middle of a
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They claimed that Catholics were regularly attacking their homes and were denying them access to certain facilities.
For almost three months, hundreds of protesters tried to stop the schoolchildren and their parents from walking to school through their area. It was truly awful to watch. Adult men and women stood on each side of the road, held back by police in riot gear and shouting sectarian abuse at the girls and their parents. Stones, bricks, fireworks, blast bombs and urine-filled balloons were thrown at them.
Some protesters even brought their children. One of the most shocking scenes I saw was a toddler in a pram being encouraged to throw something at the schoolgirls. How terrible to teach children that young to be prejudiced and to hate!
Watching the scenes outside Hoërskool Overvaal over the last week, I remembered the petrified little faces of the girls at Holy Cross. Never did I for a moment think that something similar would happen in my country.
Let me be clear: I have and never will be a “taalstryder” or fighter for the preservation of the Afrikaans language or any other language for that matter. I am also fully aware of the fact that Afrikaans became associated with much of the evils of apartheid South Africa and that many Afrikaners are still deeply racist.
Let me also emphasise that I am totally infuriated by the fact that so many children, particularly African children, still have no access to a proper education. I am ashamed at the role my ancestors played in this legacy.
I am also furious at the party that I represented in Parliament post-1994 for not fixing this. The education system is certainly one of the biggest and most shameful failures of the ANC government. There is absolutely no excuse or reason that could justify the obstacles that parents and their children continue to face. But here is the thing: it is not the children’s fault. Nor is it the fault of the parents – and by that I mean the parents and children of all races.
In an opinion piece former ANC MP Melanie Verwoerd addressed the Overvaal High School issue, depicting it as an event that placed children second and political battles first. On Minister
of Basic Education Angie Motshekga’s intervention into the matter and stopping further protests outside of the school for the “sake of the children”, former MP Verwoerd says: “She is right. No one has the right to use children to fight political battles. They are the innocent ones” (Click here for a copy of her article in News 24, 2018).
By making use of critical theory, write an academic essay wherein you address the responsibility of teachers in fostering an education system/environment conducive to the learning and becoming of our learners.
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