I had an interesting conversation with one of the teachers at my school today, about South Africa. He is very knowledgeable about my country, which is rare. It is his belief that "money for free" never works. He said that he ruined his only daughter like that, giving her more and more money, and only when he stopped did she pull herself together and get a job, so that she managed to stand on her own two feet and finally be happy! He thinks that in South Africa after the ANC took over, the most money should have been put into education, so that if you obtained good grades at school, you were assured of a place to stay and food and clothing. Not a bad idea.
I think they should have poured money into education and into police training. Upgraded every school, as a matter of priority, even the ones way out in the bundu! And none of this outcomes-based learning, for which the majority of teachers were utterly ill-equipped. If you educate children from pre-school (or even before pre-school) to be thoughtful, creative adults, your society will slowly and surely change for the better. There is an interesting story about a Harlem native, Geoffrey Canada, who worked for years to try to rehabilitate teenagers on drugs. He became so despondent of ever helping anyone, when he had the brilliant idea to get to kids before they are even born, in order to change what happens to them, to make sure they will not be drug addicts, criminals, losers. When he began his project he would go up to pregnant women and ask them to be part of his "Baby College"! He has had the most extraordinary results. http://www.hcz.org/ I love stories like that.
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