It’s the digital age, and children start using computers, cellphones and other digital devices from a young age. As a result, children literally have the internet at their fingertips. It is a rich resource for school projects and assignments, and it’s the simplest method of finding information fast, but the internet also presents a number of dangers for young users. The advent of social networking allows children to communicate with anybody and share information that might put them at risk.

Protecting children against these risks can prove challenging. Parents and educators should familiarise themselves with the internet, and specifically the different types of social networking platforms available in order to better understand the inherent dangers of each.

Facebook – an online collaboration platform that allows users to post public comments, send private messages, upload photos, and join interest groups. A common risk associated with the use of Facebook is phishing, which occurs when a person or organisation uses someone’s login details to gain access to that person’s account with the intention of obtaining personal information and even bank details from the affected person and his or her friends. The attacker can impersonate the user, sending friends messages that appear to originate from the user, and can also abuse friends’ trust to convince them to follow a link, install a malicious program, or to log in to a Phishing site themselves.

Twitter – a micro-blogging site that lets users post short messages known as “tweets”. Users can update their personal status or “tweet” messages to any other Twitter account. This means that users can send personal messages to celebrities, friends, or complete strangers. Cyber-bullying has become a serious problem amongst Twitter users, in that bullies can target the victim with hurtful messages and can spread malicious rumours to anyone in the victim’s social circle at the touch of a button. This can be emotionally harmful to a child. One of the problems is that it often goes unnoticed by parents, especially if the parents are not Twitter users themselves.

Skype – a program that allows users to engage in real-time text-based conversations, make free phone calls, and video calls to other users, over a contact-to-contact network. Skype has become a preferred method for many sexual predators to find their victims.

Live chat – there are numerous online chat rooms in which users can start a text-based conversation with anyone who is using the chat room at the same time. Sexual predators can pretend to be children or teenagers, using child-like screen names and false photographs, with the intention of gaining the trust of the other users in the chat room. Predators then befriend children and try to encourage the child to agree to a face-to-face meeting.

Although there is no guaranteed way of ensuring that children do not fall prey to these online dangers, there are a number of preventative measures that can be taken. The first step for parents is to ensure that the home computer and the child’s cell phone have the appropriate safety features and blocks installed. This can be requested from the relevant service providers when purchasing the product.

My brain is rather good at trying to de-stress me by not piling up its cells with memory information like, “Important meeting with parent at, er, eleventeen o’clock? Her name is Mrs… um. Her son, ah, er, is struggling.”

No, those things are beneath it bothering to remember. But what it does do well is download into my consciousness in vivid technicolour, hi def, with sound AND subtitles, any one of the multiple embarrassing moments I have experienced. It does this mostly when it can catch me alone. Its absolute favourite, however, is entitled ‘Bruce’s First Interview for a Teaching Post’. It sets me up by reminding me of how, at first, I was on top of my game. I impressed every governing body member in the room, shaking each hand and using each one’s name, before remarking on the beauty of the daffodils in a vase on the interview table. There were six people present, and they resembled sculptured Roman patricians in their refusal to do anything except exude marble disdain and disapproval.

Rattled but undeterred, I accepted a cup of tea and negotiated it to my place at the table without spilling a drop OR knocking over the daffodils. Before carefully bending forward to move my chair in, I looked down just in time to see the pointy end of my tie disappear into my teacup.

It went into the near-side like a dolphin with hardly a splash, before looping under and up to gracefully emerge on the far side, treading water, as it looked expectantly for applause from the Chairman opposite. The silence of a disdainful audience assumed Arctic frozen waste proportions.

Deserted and desperate, I cast around for options. Should I casually reach down, lift up the tie before nonchalantly wringing out the tea into the cup? Or dunk it twice, and then cheerfully suck the end? Or, dramatically, rip it from my neck and in one sweeping motion, cast the offending thing away? Or adopt a cavalier pose and fling the wet end over my shoulder, leaving a spray of milky brown tea down the wall behind?

My brain made no call, so I did the only thing possible. I went into denial. It never happened! I sat down, leaning back. The tie, now turned up Dilbertstyle and growing more confident by the second, made gentle ‘ploosh’ noises as it was drawn back towards its rightful place down my shirt front. It dropped from rim to saucer, to table edge, to my lap. Everyone watched it.

I committed to denial. And I might have carried it off had I not then registered another sensation. Milky tea osmosed in a steady trickle down from the tie into my nether regions. I had some difficulty answering the questions posed. Rattling off about discipline (spare the rod and spoil the child was in vogue) is not easy when your brain is focusing you on the growing wet patch surrounding your privates and you are agonising about how to shake hands as you leave, bearing in mind both hands would be needed to cover your crotch, fig-leaf style.

My brain’s last image left to me to squirm over (when, as the poet would have it, I am lonely as a cloud) was not the daffodils on the table, but a picture of 12 eyes lowering to crotch level and then twitching away in alarm and disbelief. For all I know, my turnedup tie winked. Of course, I was offered the post. It was the time of severe teacher shortages. I was the only applicant.

By Mark Henning

Others would have experienced a softer side to him – solicitous of their needs, erudite, faithful and honest. All would have noticed his rigorous self-discipline and passion for organisation and planning. None would have known that even in his 91st year, privately he would remain the adventurous young boy who had learnt to love the flowers and mountains of the Cape.

A gentleness of spirit and tenacity of purpose

The soldierly bearing was understandable. Having lost his father when he was 12, he attended Bishops Diocesan College in Cape Town, matriculating shortly before the outbreak of World War 2. Scholarships had enabled him to attend that school and he was driven to show that he was a worthy recipient, winning many awards. University beckoned, but war was declared and de Lisle had no doubt of his obligation. Captured, he was a prisoner of war in both North Africa and Italy. It is the duty of a soldier to try to escape, and this he did, surviving with the help of Italian villagers who sheltered him, although to do so was to put their lives at risk. The South African writer, Uys Krige, had had a similar experience. He wrote an essay, Salt of the Earth, to pay tribute to the peasants who had recognised common humanity as being as important as life itself.

When the war was over, De Lisle went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and became a teacher. For his pupils, says his son, Peter, life would not always have been easy or fun, but they would have learned to think deeply and to rise to challenges.

During the1960s and ‘70s – difficult times for schools – my wife and I were invited to join regularly for dinner, the Heads of other independent schools for boys. These became very special occasions – formality disappeared and we were simply Michael and Marybeth (St Martin’s), Anton and Ann (St Alban’s), Jan and Rosalie (St John’s) and Sheila and me. At these dinners, we learnt more of De Lisle – scholar, soldier, teacher, artist, poet, priest, husband and father. And, always at his side, Marybeth, with a gentleness of spirit and tenacity of purpose – beautifully described by their daughter, Daphne, at the funeral service.

Priesthood

Michael and Marybeth de Lisle retired to his beloved Cape Town where, as an ordained priest, he led parishes for 30 years. The impact he had in this venture was no less than it had been in church schools. John Gardener described him as being tough – physically and mentally, assertive and definite in his views. He was, however, too complex a character to pin down with labels. For his daughter, Helen, he was formidable, with a highly trained intellect, but with a passion to serve others. According to Daphne, he could be stubborn and impatient, but welcomed reassurance and acknowledgement. Gardener recalls the congregation singing the hymn Trust and Obey and then being told of De Lisle’s unhappiness at the prominence given to these two virtues. For this priest, love and caring for others were more important. Gardener wrote a new version, which pleased him.

There is no space to write of his great contribution to the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), an association of Headmasters and Headmistresses of independent schools and to the development of the role of governors. He is best captured in the title of Krige’s essay Salt of the Earth.

Authors: Lorien Tolstrup, Heather Skinner and Susie
Crossman
Publisher: Jac and Gill Educational Support
Programmes cc
ISBN: 0-9585147
Reviewed by Ishara Govender, Physical Science teacher,
Grades 8–11, Redhill School

This book would not be my choice for 2012, as this year we are implementing the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in Grade 9.

On page V, the authors list Learning Outcomes and Assessment Standards that are no longer in use. The new terminology now refers to Specific Aims. Learning Outcomes cannot be translated into Specific Aims because, for example, what was previously called Learning Outcome 1 is now called Specific Aim 2. The Assessment Standards are now different as well.

On page VI, the listed Development Outcomes do not correspond to the new Development Outcomes, of which there are now only three.

Book can assist with general research

The topics are dealt with in a very informative way. I especially enjoy that Knowledge, Skills and Values are listed in the learner’s book to help students adopt a holistic approach to the syllabus. I believe that if learners know why they are learning something, they would have a better attitude towards learning and, hence, learning would become easier.

The textbook also supplies useful quotations, which will help students with their write-ups for practical experiments or when they have to do a research project.

Well-presented diagrams and useful tables

I especially love that the book includes tasks classified as either homework or portfolio tasks. The diagrams are also clear and well-labelled. Each concept is either explained with a use of a diagram or picture. This is good, as many learners are visual learners. The chemistry diagrams are particularly good. When I taught this section, I had to spend hours drawing particle diagrams or looking for these diagrams on the Internet, but here they are in this book in abundance.

I found the list of terms at the end of each chapter useful. They will really help learners to have a quick reference when they are studying. They will also serve as a reference when students are not sure of content.

The book also offers Indigenous Knowledge, which is not very easy to find without hours of research. I especially like the Natural Disasters section.

The section on Energy and Electric Current is another favourite of mine. The authors have compiled a table, into which they’ve imported terms like energy, force, work power and current, in order to provide a clear overview. Putting the scientific meaning of each concept next to its colloquial counterpart is also helpful.

The teacher’s guide is comprehensive and efficiently compiled. It includes the answers to questions asked in the learner’s book, as well as various rubrics that can be adapted to a specific task. The memoranda of assessments are also given with a breakdown of mark allocations. This is like a teacher’s dream come true. It would be good if the teacher’s guide could be digitally presented as well, possibly on a CD for extended teaching and learning opportunities. The teacher’s guide is also useful in that it includes a possible scheme of work for the Grade 9 school year, as well as templates for a year plan.

Needs to be CAPS compliant, says author

I was initially excited when I was handed the book, as I felt there was no particular textbook that sufficiently covered the work. However, I was gravely disappointed to find that the textbook is not CAPS compliant. I do believe that this book could be revised to include CAPS materials, and then it would be an excellent book that I could recommend to other teachers to use.

Author: Peter Vale
Publisher: Otterley Press
ISBN: 978-0-9814315-3-6
Reviewed by Mark Henning

Zapiro has made his mark in South Africa through his trenchant, witty and bold cartoons, syndicated in leading South African newspapers. Thousands of readers look forward each day to see which event will be his particular target, and how he will expose the follies of politicians through the laughter of common folk. The symbols and metaphors he uses make powerful political statements.

Older readers will be aware that Zapiro stands on the shoulders of many cartoonists, noteworthy in their times for using visual images to capture the essence of policies and politicians: the works of cartoonists like Abe Berry, Bob Connolly, Jock Leyden, Brendan Reynolds, Len Sak and many others were well known.

What is the result of their efforts? A reader’s first reaction is to smile as a cartoon is introduced that shows the sharp eye and wit of the artist. With each cartoon, Vale has a comment on the work and times of the cartoonist, and briefly sets the context. Although a well-known academic, he has avoided using the technical language that makes reading learned works so boring. Here, academic research is brought to the reader in a most accessible way. Of course, commenting on cartoons has become a standard examination test and this book will undoubtedly be of value to matriculants, never less than through its examples of how to comment on cartoons. However, more importantly, it will be a delight to read and to introduce discussions.

Certainly, every teacher of South African history should have a copy and their pupils should at least have access to one. However, its greatest appeal will be to non-historians and those finished with examinations, such as this reviewer. Both cartoons and notes are captivating.

Editor: Stanislao G. Pugliese
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 978-0823233595
Reviewed by Carlin Romano

Writers closely identified with the Holocaust rarely escape their literary cells.

Elie Wiesel has written 57 books – try naming a few of them besides Night. When Imre Kertész, the Hungarian-Jewish novelist and Auschwitz survivor, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002, the Swedish Academy understandably cited his “writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history”, even as Kertész, the first Hungarian to win the prize, expressed hope that it might more generally shine light on the “ignored literature of Hungary”.

And then there is Primo Levi. When he plunged to his death down the stairwell of his Turin apartment building on the morning of April 11, 1987, only minutes after answering the doorbell of his third-floor apartment and thanking the concierge for his morning mail, a single question – ‘Did he commit suicide?’ – threatened to turn Levi’s entire life and work into a simplistic verdict on the possibility of a Holocaust survivor’s transcending demons of the past.

New essay collection offers us a fuller portrait

One triumph of scholarship, however, is that it can ride the force of established reputation like a wave, and take us into new dimensions of a writer or subject. At first glance, Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism After the Fall, a new collection of essays edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese (Fordham University Press, 2011), looks to be more of the same – another deserved monument to 20th-century literature’s most disciplined witness to the Holocaust, that flinty, unsentimental voice like no other. But Pugliese, a professor of modern European history and Italian studies at Hofstra University, offers us a fuller portrait.

Levi, he reminds us, undertook “a political stance of consistent, fervent, and ongoing antifascism” throughout his career, and not just against the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. “Every age has its own fascism”, Levi wrote in a 1974 essay that Pugliese aptly quotes, “and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will. There are many ways of reaching this point, and not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralysing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned, and where the security of a privileged few depends on the forced labour and the forced silence of the many.”

Calling a spade a spade

That fits Syria fairly well. Libya, too. And how about China and Russia? A few years ago, much battling took place in the intellectual world over the idea of ‘Islamofascism’, and whether tossing that term around made any sense except as a kind of cultural hate-speech. Let’s be more modest here. How about sticking to good old-fashioned fascism, secular style, and recognising that writers such as Levi, who confronted it headon in the Holocaust, can be among our best guides to it in contexts we don’t normally associate with them?

As Pugliese puts it, “Fascism begins by denying the fundamental freedom and equality of human beings.” Levi rightly saw that “science and humanism were our only hope against a recurrence of madness”. For Pugliese, whose scholarship on Italian political culture includes a fine biography of novelist Ignazio Silone, it meant a political system “that sought to strip away the private sphere from the individual and turn it over to the state. On another front, it inflated language to its own ends so that rabid nationalism and distorted history become the common tongue of empire.”

We must see Levi not just as a ‘Holocaust writer’, but as a writer

In Pugliese’s own essay, and in several by his contributing writers, we see “why Levi did not want to be known as a ‘Holocaust writer’; he aspired to the simple title of ‘writer’ without any adjective”. Levi knew fascist ideology threatened human beings in many cultures, in many eras. Joseph Farrell, Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, helps to make that point here in ‘The Humanity and Humanism of Primo Levi’, pointing out that a constant refrain in Levi’s work is pinpointing the Nazi programme of “demolishing the human”, of brutalising enemies in a manner we see copied today by despots from the Congo to Libya.

Viewing Levi in the broad perspective – other strong essays include Johan Ahr’s ‘Primo Levi and the Concept of History’ and Risa Sodi’s ‘Primo Levi in the Public Interest: Turin, Auschwitz, Israel’ – this book encourages one to grasp how a ‘Holocaust writer’ can serve as tribune against fascism writ large. Ahr properly stresses that Levi rejected overarching historical theories, preferring “wary induction over bold deduction”. Levi founded his philosophy of life, Ahr writes, “on mistrust of any scheme in which individuals lose the positions and functions they make for themselves.” Sodi, in turn, reports how Levi, from 1959 on, took on the duties expected of a consummate Italian intellectual, “writing op-ed pieces and newspaper columns, giving press interviews and public lectures”, and not just about the Holocaust.

“Here there is no why”

He performed those tasks with the gift for telling detail that marked all his work. Many know the anecdote from Survival in Auschwitz, Levi’s famous memoir of Auschwitz that was published in English as If This is a Man. Levi, a young prisoner in Auschwitz suffering from thirst, noticed an icicle through his cell window and sought to grab it. A Nazi guard knocked it out of his hand. “Warum?” (Why?) asked Levi. “Hier ist kein warum,” (Here there is no why) answered the guard in a phrase that became symbolic of the Holocaust’s careening away from rationality itself.

Levi’s whole life and writing career developed into an effort to restore that why – to keep reason and humanism alive, to serve as the voice of rational coping with the Holocaust, whatever the conclusions of those who think he took his own life. Others, including this writer, believe that Levi suffered a dizzy spell or neurological incident that terrible morning in April 1987, possibly as a result of medication, and that his death was an accident. Could this sober, restrained, fastidious and intensely thoughtful man, always concerned with the dignity of himself and others, have imposed such a gruesome scene on his family members, several of whom lived in the building? No one will ever be sure what happened – there’s evidence on both sides – but I think not.

What defined Levi as writer and man was the determination to bear witness

It is worth remembering, nonetheless, the ugliness of Levi’s wartime experience, which compounded his later depression over his failing health and the burden of caring for his mother and mother-in-law, both nonagenarians who lived with him and his wife. Arrested in 1943 in the mountains of Italy with a ragtag bunch of partisans, Levi was 23 when he arrived at Auschwitz in a cattle car from Fossoli di Carpi. Only 24 of 650 prisoners on that train survived Auschwitz. How did Levi make it through his 10 months? Among the explanations: his ability as a chemist (he ate raw glycerine and made fritters from sanitary cotton), the kindness of a doomed fellow deportee, the happenstance of contracting pleurisy that spared him from the notorious death march of prisoners away from Auschwitz as the Soviet army advanced on it.

And what sort of character did Auschwitz forge in Levi? Years later he could display enormous grace, an unwillingness to apportion blame unfairly. In his years as a factory manager, he would wear short-sleeve shirts on his visits to Germany, so the ‘174517’ on his arm could be clearly seen. But later he would write to Heinz Riedt, the German translator who took on Se questo e un uomo (If This is a Man), “I have never nurtured any hatred for the German people, and if I had, I would be cured of it now, having known you.”

What defined him as writer and man was the determination to stay strong, to bear witness, to insist on clear moral distinctions, to reject suicide, to insist on the dignity of man. He wrote of Auschwitz: “My time there did not destroy me physically or morally, as was the case with other people. I did not lose my family, my country, or my home.” Indeed, after Levi returned to his family apartment, in Turin, following the ninemonth journey that he recounted in The Truce, he lived peacefully as a chemical engineer, factory manager and honoured writer the rest of his life. In The Drowned and the Saved, his final collection of essays on Holocaust themes, Levi reiterated the point: “Auschwitz left its mark on me, but it did not remove my desire to live. On the contrary, that experience increased my desire, it gave my life a purpose, to bear witness, so that such a thing should never occur again.”

He was intent on distinguishing evil from non-evil

Part of that purpose was to distinguish evil from non-evil. In a passage of The Drowned and the Saved, in the very chapter – ‘The Gray Zone’ – that became a locus classicus of Levi’s realism about behaviour in Auschwitz, he nonetheless drew a sharp line: “I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.”

Thanks to such clarity, he evolved into the noble, dignified witness to the fate of innocents under fascism, the careful reporter with the steel-trap intellect, whose lean prose distilled his life and beliefs as efficiently as any chemical apparatus.

Resolutely rational, Levi exemplified on the page the indomitability of the human over the bestial. His equanimity in the face of evil, his sober indignation without any will to sermonise, his retention of a visceral moral optimism, inspired readers as much as it edified them.

Our humanity must be defended at all costs

In The Periodic Table, his 21 “tales of militant chemistry”, he recalled his Baconian love of science as the conqueror of nature. Once fascism violently interfered with his scientific goals, Levi came to understand that no element mattered as much to him as the human. How, though, did one apply a chemist’s mentality to this substance so different from raw matter? Levi solved the problem by absorbing the great chemist Lavoisier’s point that physical elements are simply “substances we have not yet been able to decompose”. In the stunning climax of If This is a Man, Levi painfully depicted the final decomposition of human character in Auschwitz – of prisoners waiting for others to die so they could steal their crumbs of bread. It made Levi all the more committed later in life to the idea that our humanity, at best a fragile compound, must be defended at all costs.

One imagines that Levi, if he were still with us, would join the vast majorities who, polls indicate, view the killing of Osama bin Laden as just retribution, and the brutality of Bashar Al-Assad and Muammar el-Qaddafi as the fascistic mayhem it is. When the so-called Historikerstreit erupted in Germany in 1986 – the debate stirred by Ernst Nolte and ‘new revisionist’ historians who questioned the uniqueness of Nazi crimes – Levi made plain, in The Drowned and the Saved and elsewhere, that he did not “forgive” the Nazis, as fellow Holocaust survivor Jean Améry once charged. Levi had, according to his biographer Carole Angier, “been glad to see the most responsible punished at Nuremberg, at Frankfurt, in Jerusalem.”

Because Primo Levi was not just a Holocaust survivor or “great Holocaust author”. He was a humanist who insisted on justice – one whose incisive voice against those who murder the innocent still speaks to all lands, and all cultures.

The 2011 Matric results indicated that South Africa’s secondary school system is possibly slowly improving; however, there are areas that still need a lot of attention.

Msindisi Sam, a Human Language Technology lecturer in the African Languages Studies Section in the School of Languages at Rhodes University, believes that technology has an important role to change people’s perceptions about African languages. “Technology is the most fascinating and modern field for young people. If vernaculars could be used in conjunction with the teaching and learning of technology, that could possibly reduce perceived challenges,” says Sam. A change in attitude requires change in the way the mother tongues are taught at all levels of education. The aim must be to create ‘market-related’, interesting opportunities for young people while preserving and developing indigenous languages.

‘Localising’ computers in isiXhosa a valuable lesson for all

In 2008, with teachers who enrolled for the Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) Information Communication Technology (ICT) course at Rhodes University, a bilingual computer literacy course was developed by Sam and Dr Lorenzo Dalvit, a former Education lecturer at Rhodes. In the same year, the group created a bilingual booklet for computer literacy studies based on their course design, and used it in a pilot programme for Grade 10 learners from Nombulelo High School in Grahamstown and for schools in the Dwesa area of the Transkei. Using open-source software, all the computers at the school were ‘localised’. In other words, computer instructions were programmed into isiXhosa, which made it easy to facilitate learning and teaching using computers in both English and isiXhosa. The learners’ feedback was used to advance research into this pedagogical approach. “For learners to see computer terms such as ‘File’ appearing in their mother tongue on a computer screen was already a departure from an English-dominated past. It showed them that any language can be used to deliver technology,” says Sam.

Sam used the pilot project as the basis for his ongoing research towards his PhD degree. “A host of possibilities can come from this project,” he advises. “For example, Rhodes has been working with an organisation called www.translate.org to make the university website available in a number of African languages. This tells me that young people who study software application, as well as languages – specifically translation skills – will increasingly have career options open up before them.”

ICT in mother tongues can revolutionise the whole curriculum

Sam and Dalvit believe further that developing and designing new ICT courses in African languages can revive research and scholarship – which, in turn and in time, could assist in developing new, more relevant whole-school curricula, and could also further the national drive to popularise Maths, Science and Technology. For example, as technology advances, new terminology becomes accepted parlance. To allow African children access to technology in the mother tongue, we need language practitioners with a Science background. The best time to groom young scientists, engineers and technologists conversant in African languages is now, in preparation for the advent of the African knowledge economy. At the same time, we will be strengthening indigenous languages, as we know that languages develop as new terms are coined, and others fall away.

I believe – with Sam, Dalvit and many others – that technology is the way to go. Students need to learn about it while they are taught through the use of it in both the lingua franca and our precious indigenous languages. As they explore digital worlds, perhaps they will perceive anew the value of their mother tongues.

The article carried recently in the Times newspaper (‘iPads for elite schools’, 26 January 2012) refers.

In this piece, journalist Katharine Child reported on Kingsmead College’s plan to roll out a new Information Technology (IT) strategy, namely the use throughout the school of iPad technology, subsequent to the installation of a campus-wide wireless network.
We would like to share with your readers a richer picture of the contexts that led to our decision than was provided by Child in her article.
Our decision to introduce the iPad as another teaching and learning tool was taken only after intensive, relevant research and consultation with our Council, staff, parents, students and other relevant stakeholders, such as technology consultants. The move supports our chosen strategic themes of student experience, collaboration and communication.

We were initially encouraged to learn that ‘roll-outs’ of tablet technology in schools is a growing worldwide phenomenon, confirming that it will be a primary instruction tool in the classroom of the future. The challenge for any school today is to create a learning environment where children, who are generally so digitally ‘tuned in’, can learn in a relevant and engaging way.

We then used the following questions – derived from researcher James Mackenzie’s work – to determine whether the iPad could support our curriculum and methodologies:

1.    Do the educational resources available for reading on the iPad adequately replace the content available in traditional textbooks?
2.    Can the iPad support rigorous research as well as the harvesting and storage of information?
3.    Can the iPad provide students with sufficient communication tools so they are able to translate their findings from research into persuasive essays and presentations as well as multimedia products that seem desirable?

The answers to these questions confirmed that ‘apps’ developed by Apple specifically for the South African context will enhance how our girls learn.

The third stage of our research involved the serious and sensitive issue of affordability. Although we have asked our Grade 6s and 8 parents to buy iPads for their children, the school will also house mobile banks of iPads that will be available to girls for use in all the grades and for those who cannot afford them.

Kingsmead hopes to achieve the following stated objectives:

·    Reduce the amount of investment into fixed computer laboratories and desktop computers.
·    Achieve maximum usage from IT assets.
·    Embrace multipurpose learning using rich media options.
·    Prepare students for tomorrow’s workplace.
·    Enhance the quality of instruction.
·    Move away from traditional pedagogy.
·    Reduce reliance on paper-based teaching and learning.
·    Increase whole-school awareness of a comprehensive IT policy that stresses responsible, safe use of technology.

We have included in our plan the non-negotiable intention to podcast lessons to our partner schools, allowing many other children to benefit from iPad project. We aim, in this way and through using teacher-generated open content, to address the issue of the digital divide. We also believe that resource-rich independent schools have the opportunity, and indeed the responsibility, to pave the way when it comes to implementing teaching and learning innovations, and to share their knowledge and experience with other schools across the country and beyond.

We are ever mindful of the words of John Dewey, educator and philosopher: “If we teach the way we did yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”

Sincerely

Lisa Kaplan, Headmistress, Kingsmead College

I refer to your well-presented article in Independent Education, ‘Should children learn to read and write before five years of age? (Vol. 14, no. 4, Summer 2011).

It is a great pity that pre-school learners are being introduced to formal learning programmes, instead of learning through play, as is their right.

I observed young children in my family in pre-school classes in the UK, Sweden and Romania (where they attended an American international school), and far prefer the Swedish model, which does not start structured learning and a formal curriculum before the age of seven years. The children are completely relaxed and at ease in their dagas (pre-schools), which even has a five-year age range within each class.

Exploration, discovery, investigation, unlimited gross and fine motor activities, language enrichment, perceptual and creative experiences, rhythm, music and movement, enjoyment of books and stories, and imaginative play opportunities, all contribute together towards balanced, integrated whole-child development. That is the way young children learn best, with plenty of scope for self-chosen activities.  By these means, they naturally master all the elements of learning that they will need later on: attention, concentration, task commitment, motivation, perseverance, memory development, understanding, reasoning and confidence, and so on.

In Knysna, we are piloting a literacy programme called SOUNS at 25 township and rural pre-schools under the auspices of the Knysna Education Trust. The programme equipment consists of lower-case alphabet letters made of a resilient non-toxic nylon compound. The SOUNS Literacy Programme complies with developmentally-appropriate principles of learning for children aged one to six years.

The programme was started two years ago with sponsored sets for each pre-school. The results so far, in communities where literacy and reading are largely underdeveloped, are excellent, and many children have now entered Grade 1 with good letter-sound knowledge. Their scholastic progress is being monitored.

A further grant for this programme has enabled the Knysna Education Trust to put a SOUNS set into every class in its affiliated pre-schools, so every teacher can use her own equipment whenever it is convenient, instead of sharing one set with the whole pre-school. A SOUNS demonstration room, designed for best practice, has been set up in Knysna for training purposes.

Further sets are being used very effectively in township and rural primary schools, and some learner support teachers are also using SOUNS letters with older children, with promising results. This literacy programme, brought to South Africa by Rotary International, is flourishing in Knysna and is complies perfectly with pre-school teaching methods.

Sincerely,
Lesley Satchel, SOUNS Coordinator, Knysna Education Trust