Last week, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said that select schools would be piloting subjects such as robotics this year and, if successful, the subjects could be rolled out to public schools as early as 2021.
This is the most uplifting news I have heard since it was reported that great white sharks are back in False Bay. Anybody with the meanest intelligence must surely know that Angie’s knowledge of robotics is about the same as my knowledge of Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. She has a master’s degree in education, sure. But what use is robotics in a school curriculum? It is very unlikely that, apart from assembling products on a production line, robots are not going to do much more than they do now – it is fundamental: no multitask robot will replace what people can do at a fraction of the cost, even if less speedily and accurately.
My problem, as a consulting engineer, is that even graduate students have to get in-house training from us because they are poorly educated. Specifically, the maths and physics knowledge of school leavers is very poor. For years, we employed students for vacational training. I put a stop to it. The only students who could grasp some of the maths concepts we deal with were from Zimbabwe. The South Africans, even with university training, were too poor in maths and physics to be of use. It has to start in school. Lowering the pass rate does not help.
Further, like it or not, the language of business and engineering is English. Engineers must be able to write reports – with words in the right order and all spelled out and everything. Grammar comes from people, not computers. To improve grammar, emphasise reading. I regularly go to the pub (oh, to drink milk). Now, I read in the pub. It is my pleasure. The barmen (they are all men) and waiters (all from other African countries) asked me to give them books to read. So I have given them books by Alexander McCall Smith (The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) and Neville Shute (Beyond the Black Stump). Good stories, well written. It seems to me that, apart from setworks, school learners just do not read. Thus, they do not really learn grammar. They become adults who do not read and engineers who cannot write reports. Reading must be encouraged.
We also need to teach the development of technology. Nobody does this. It is a fascinating topic. For example, if Lee de Forest had not invented the first electronic amplifier, Adolf Hitler would not have come to power. Before World War II, there was no radar, no jet aircraft, no penicillin large-scale production and no atomic energy. It all developed in five years. Technology development should be taught.
Minister Angie, here are some subjects that would not assist learners entering their Robot Wars team, but would be very useful:
• a short course in contacting any living soul in the South African Revenue Service to discuss a tax matter or to obtain a tax clearance certificate;
• a three-month course in how to acquire, submit, answer queries on becoming a registered vendor for any of the provincial governments, any multinational or national government;
• a three-month course on how to submit invoices to clients and get them to pay; and
• a two-month course in learning that any invoice submitted to the North West provincial government will never, in fact, be paid, despite numerous assurances to the contrary. It’s not you. Nothing wrong with you. Not your fault. Accept this.
The idea of robotics for school learners is ridiculous. It seems to be some organisation touting the ‘cool idea’ of robotics so that it can sell ‘teaching robots’ at inflated prices to schools. Robotics requires a knowledge of electrics, hydraulics and feedback systems. Robotics requires a knowledge of stepper motors, digital alignment systems and similar, which would tax a third-year engineering student. Please, first fix the basic issues.