I had a wonderful, peaceful dream last night. Was helping a group of youngsters with something arty and asked my son Travis to lend a hand. He did. Gently, patiently, with a smile. Woke up this morning with heart rest. Travis, you see, passed away five years ago today. He was 21 years, seven months and 14 days old.
Travis is often in my thoughts. Especially, for some mysterious reason, on airplanes. But he doesn’t feature that often in dreams. So this was unusual. More so because the dream remains vivid.
My faith helps me appreciate that we’re spirits having a human experience. Also, deeper reading on the subject of death – especially Elisabeth Kubler-Ross – has convinced me I’ll see Travis again. So I no longer dwell on the loss of my son. Even so, the dream was a blessing. An amazingly gentle way to ease into a potentially difficult day.
I’ve been spending time thinking about dreams. My wife, a life coach, shares much of what she learns. Lately, she’s been investing a lot in the relevance of dreams. So every morning we compare what we recall and try work out what the sub-conscious is trying to tell us. Fortunately, I don’t remember many of mine. Understanding dreams is a science. With my limited knowledge, that could be dangerous. As it is with any subject.
But whatever the deeper meaning, last night’s dream was a wonderful reminder of Travis’s best quality: enormous tolerance with people who trusted him. His brilliant mind despised intellectual sloth. But as staff at Moneyweb will attest, he was patience personified when called over to help with self-inflicted computer issues.
The dream also got me thinking about our national fixation with the education system.
Travis never did take to persistent efforts by teachers and headmasters to squeeze his round peg into a square hole. He hated school. And most teachers, particularly those who hadn’t moved on from a belief that they always knew better. With the Internet, that’s just not possible. Travis was aware of this. As do thousands, maybe tens of thousands of frustrated young minds trapped in autocratic schoolrooms.
Yet all we keep hearing  – not just from unions – is that teachers should be better paid. Perhaps. But that misses the point. Humanity is hard wired to throw resources at challenges in the belief sheer weight will overcome. Sometimes it does work. But never when there’s a structural defect.
So when will the educational penny drop? When will we realize that the attrition rate is unacceptable? And that most of the young folk we do manage to push through those 12 years emerge unprepared to play a full role in modern society? Unprepared to plug huge holes in the world of work?
Excluding 10% which goes to interest and debt repayments, a full quarter of South Africa’s tax receipts are spent on education. That’s enormous by global standards. But whichever results matrix you use, it’s not working. We’re deep into the Information Age. Yet, be it bred from fear or idiocy, many educators persist with the one-size-fits-all system of the 1800s.
There must be a better way. South Africa is fearless in so many areas. But we baulk from disrupting a broken education system. Shirk from introducing ways to replace the old with something meaningful. Our tax Rands deserve better. As do all those little Travis’s across this great nation, wherever they may be, from Bruntville or Boksburg to Bushbuckridge.
