The case, Young v Mail and Guardian (M&G), raises critical questions about transparency and freedom of expression in schools, and holds important lessons regarding transparency in the education system as a whole.
The case was brought against the M&G (formerly the Weekly Mail) by an official of the former Department of Education and Training (DET) and her husband. The DET was the department responsible for Black education during the apartheid era. The case arises from an article run in July 1993 and entitled, “DET keeps its all in the family”. The official, Moira Young and her husband, Samuel, claim that the article defames them as it implicates them in irregularities in the sale of tenders to manufacture goods for one of the department’s programmes called Skills and Techniques (S&T).
At the time the article was written, Mrs Young was in charge of the S&T programme. The article alleged that Mr Young was the business partner of a certain Niewoudt, whose company was awarded the contracts for the S&T programme.
The defence is seeking to establish a principle set in the United States in the New York Times v Sullivan case. In this judgement it was found that the guarantees of freedom of speech in the US Constitution prohibit a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to her or his official conduct unless s/he proves that the statement was made with “actual malice”. This is similar to the ruling handed down by Judge Edward Cameron in the Holomisa v The Star case recently, except that the word used in this instance was “unreasonably” (see article in this issue). The effect of the Cameron judgement is to place the onus on the public official instituting the claim to prove that the article in dispute was written with full knowledge that it was false, or with reckless disregard for whether it was false or not. If this principle is established in the Young v M&G case it will allow journalists to report on a far broader range of activities of public officials, especially in cases where it will be difficult to establish the truth of allegations in court.
But while the case itself is a crucial test in the area of media freedom, the elements which gave rise to it, namely the S&T programme, sheds more light on the often murky area of freedom of expression and education.
The programme was devised for lower primary schools in the former DET. It replaced a subject called “Arts and Crafts”, which barely existed in DET schools anyway given the well- documented prejudice in this department against creative education. The creators of the programme have never been shy to spell out the programme’s hidden curriculum and in the introductory part we are told that the aim: “...is to afford children the opportunity of developing skills by exposing them to the experience of using as many tools and materials as possible and ascertaining that they are taught the right techniques in the process”.
This “developing of skills” means making objects prescribed by manuals dispatched to the schools, such as paper flowers, peg mats and pictures made of edible seeds. Pupils are expected to follow instructions in the manuals to the letter, with marks being deducted from the scorecards for straying from the instructions. The actual “skills” underlying the manual activities in the modules have been identified as separating, crushing, cutting, piercing, sealing, measuring, weaving, joining, and so on.
In response to a letter of complaint about the dubious educational value of the project in 1988, the Deputy Director of Career Education in the DET said, “Despite the claims made, reality indicates that virtually no signs of the positive aspects such as creative thinking, flexibility, problem solving, fine coordination, imagination, decision making and self worth attributed [to] Art and Craft, is apparent in this department’s [DET] school leavers today, despite the many years the subject has been presented at schools. In actual fact, very few school leavers are able to readily secure jobs and are reputed for their clumsiness and poor co-ordination, resulting in breakages”. What is clear from this is the racist, Verwoedian vision of this programme: skilling black children for manual labour, and reserving creative education for their white masters.
Since the inception of the programme, concerned educationalists have condemned it because of its suppression of creative education, while the department has defended it on the grounds that many teachers welcome it. There is little doubt that on one level many teachers would have welcomed it: it saves time having to find materials for arts and craft classes, it imposes rigid formula on often overworked and under paid teachers, the majority of whom would not have had access themselves through the system to the creative techniques of art education. Praise from these teachers was used vociferously as a weapon to justify the pedagogically unjustifiable.
The vast amounts of money spent on the development and implementation of the programme - it reportedly has a projected budget of R660 million - has also added to the controversy: as was pointed out at the time of implementation, art could have been introduced into primary schools for a fraction of the price. The financing of the subject, and the way it was tendered for, has been plagued by accusations of irregularities on the part of the DET officials involved, resulting in the investigative article in the Weekly Mail that is the subject of the Young v Weekly Mail case.
In 1994 members of the National Education and Training Forum (NETF) - the body set up to negotiate the transformation of education in the transitional period - discovered that the DET was developing and testing a new S&T programme in secret in schools in the North-Western Transvaal. This was in flagrant violation of a moratorium on textbook and curriculum during the country's transitional period from apartheid to democracy and the NETF instituted a full investigation.
In November 1994, a NETF sub- committee completed its report on the investigation and endorsed the selective continuation of the programme on the grounds that the materials were already in many schools and amounts still had to be paid out to the programme. However, a group of progressive educators rejected the final report on the grounds that it reflected a minority position - mainly the position of the old DET officials. The educators appealed directly to the Minister of Education to discontinue the programme while setting up a process of public review of the materials including a full audit of all moneys spent up to that point. The money saved, they argued, should then be ploughed back into the implementation of art education in all schools, the latter being a commitment of the Government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP).
It is unclear at this stage whether the subject is still being implemented at schools. A fuller investigation will need to be conducted to determine the extent to which it has actually been halted, but the sorry history of the S&T programme raises crucial questions about the tasks that need to be undertaken in order to develop a sorely-needed culture of freedom of expression in the education system.
Firstly, the tender and approval systems in relation to educational materials have been shrouded in secrecy and have been plagued with allegations of irregularities and nepotism for many years. These systems are in urgent need of an overhaul. More transparency needs to be introduced so that all interested parties know what procedures to follow, and all have equal opportunities at tendering for materials.
Some publishers are presently arguing in favour of an open tender system, where no restrictions are placed on publishers wishing to tender. While this approach seems to be fair on the surface, it has historically tended to favour the more well-resourced - often multinational - companies that usually already have an advantage in textbook production, as they have the resources to respond more quickly to tender requirements. They are also able to absorb unsuccessful bids more easily. These factors make it very difficult for new, often independent publishers to break into the textbook publishing field, discouraging the development of a diverse, indigenously rooted publishing industry. The South African education system will need to make careful decisions to ensure that the textbook system is seen to be fairer than the old one - especially given that the textbook market accounts for about 80% of the total book market in the country - and that it adheres to the Government-stated commitment to media diversity.
Secondly, access to official information and democratic consultation with regard to curriculum development will need to be drastically improved. Effective information flows should prevent the type of waste exemplified by S&T. Under the old dispensation, curriculum development was conducted by syllabus committees ultimately under the control of the old Department of National Education. It was not clear what the procedures of appointment were, and the names of Committee members were not released to the public. Also, no standing rules prevented those with conflicts of interest from being appointed. Reportedly, this gave rise to incidents like committee members rewriting syllabus content to conform with textbooks they themselves had produced to better their chances of having them prescribed.
The new Ministry will have to find mechanisms to ensure that curriculum development is as open and inclusive as possible, and will need to resist the tempting option of retreating into committees with unclear standing rules once again. There are several welcome initiatives in favour of openness in this regard, particularly in Gauteng.
Thirdly, teachers, parents and other interest group will need to be informed about the provisions of the Open Democracy Bill, so, should it be promulgated, they can use it to prise open the still pervasive culture of secrecy in the Education Department, especially in relation to finances. Audits should be conducted on demand - if the demand is reasonable and in the public interest - and released timeously. The Bill could prove to be a vital weapon in fighting the influence of the old apartheid bureaucracy in the civil service, still so keenly felt given their constitutionally guaranteed roles in the new dispensation.
Fourthly, the Government needs to be held to its promise of introducing creative education in schools, as a means of equalising opportunities in the creative fields, and of challenging the streaming of (mainly black) working class students in manual labour skills. The development of a culture of freedom of expression in schools will hinge largely on encouraging creative, open-ended, questioning, student- and skills-based learning, rather than the authoritarian rote-learning characteristics of past curricula.