Helene Smuts

The Bantu education system, imposed by the apartheid government, had disastrous consequences for the quality of rural education in South Africa. Low educational performance, especially in the subjects of mathematics and science, has persisted long after the end of the apartheid system due to inadequate and insufficiently relevant training for rural teachers and appropriate materials for their students. Helene Smuts has introduced a culturally relevant learning methodology that integrates rural knowledge systems into the formal school curriculum through teacher training strategies.

Helene has developed a learning methodology that cuts across disciplines and integrates culturally and contextually based learning in science and mathematics in grades 9, 10 and 11 in rural schools. By using familiar patterns that are drawn from the rich South African cultural heritage and its knowledge systems, she provides rural teachers and students with an accessible, and powerful, visual language of learning that makes information accessible and releases teachers and students’ potential for excellence in these disciplines.

Helene is working to make academic information accessible, relevant and exciting to teachers and students in rural areas. Mathematics and science are still perceived as foreign and irrelevant subjects in rural communities today, and many teachers and students fear these subjects, despite the evidence of rich cultural knowledge in these disciplines that exists around them. Complex mathematical patterns are woven, beaded, or painted on objects of everyday use, including baskets, jewelry, and houses. Patterns in the skies above have been known and used by rural people for centuries. Traditional craftsmen and many people in rural areas intuitively understand these patterns without necessarily having studied them in a classroom. Helene is working to provide a platform for interaction between this rich cultural/informal knowledge and academic/formal knowledge in mathematics and science in order to make these subjects more accessible and exciting. She bridges these knowledge systems to empower both teachers and students with confidence in their ability to grasp and convey these concepts and to encourage further learning. She releases their potential for excellence both as teachers and students by demonstrating that the information is both familiar and interesting. In this way, subjects such as mathematics, geometry, astronomy and physics become more familiar to them through a visual language of learning that is drawn from knowledge inherent to their cultural heritage. This system has succeeded in removing the fear of mathematics and science for both the teachers (who are not as adequately trained in these subjects) and the learners themselves. Consequentially, this work is creating the conditions for rural youth to pursue excellence in these subjects and, thus, pursue a wider range of higher-learning opportunities.

Helene’s organization, Africa meets Africa (AmA) has trained 900 teachers from thirty schools in eighteen rural districts of South Africa to use these tools in their classrooms. This has benefitted more than 50,000 students. Currently, Helene is working in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology to expand to fifteen more schools in KwaZulu Natal and another forty in Mpumalanga.

Since the dawn of the democratic years in South Africa in 1994, education has been widely acknowledged as the main solution to problems of youth unemployment and regional economic development disparities. For the youth in the rural disadvantaged areas of South Africa, access to good quality education could indeed be the ticket to breaking out of the vicious cycle of poverty and unemployment. Yet, barriers stemming from the colonial and apartheid legacy remain today. The Bantu education system, primarily designed to produce a skilled and domestic labor force for the white community, only offered rural students subjects that were regarded as less important or less intellectual and were denied the opportunity to learn mathematics and other “hard” sciences, which were exclusively for white students.

These subjects were only introduced after 1994 when the post-apartheid government attempted to equalize the education system for all learners in the nation, regardless of their social or racial background. In order to do so, the country imported a pedagogical system from New Zealand called outcomes-based education (OBE). This system encouraged the adaptation of learning content to the social context of learners so that students could embrace the so-called “foreign subjects” within their own learning environments. In recognition of the diverse cultural and social context of learners in South Africa, this system allowed teachers to develop their own learning materials and adapt to their learners’ needs. The aim was to ensure that each learner had access to learning methods and resources that would allow students to see the relevance of each subject. However, the switch to OBE did not necessarily resolve the problems of the Bantu system. Teachers who were taught and trained under the Bantu system were still disempowered and at times, even untrained. The new OBE system did not provide these teachers, especially in rural areas lacking in basic resources, with the tools and training needed to maximize their newfound freedom under OBE, and students suffered as a result.

Insufficient teacher training and the lack of teaching and learning materials led to the ineffective implementation of the OBE system. The new system overestimated the teachers’ abilities to develop their own effective learning materials. Instead of helping to overcome the negative legacy of Bantu education, OBE led to an ineffective overhaul of the still fragile education system in South Africa. Thus the government’s attempt to address the disparities proved ineffective and low levels of educational performance still haunt the rural areas of South Africa today. Although the education system was liberalized in early 1990s, subjects like mathematics and science are still a challenge to most learners, especially in rural parts of South Africa. They still struggle to grasp concepts which are perceived as foreign and excessively abstract. As a result, the performance of rural learners in these subjects is poor and this limits their ability to gain access meaningful higher education opportunities and better jobs.

Official statistics from the Ministry of Education indicate that rural students perform about 50 percent less well in mathematics and science matriculation exams when compared to urban students (a 20 percent pass rate for rural students versus a 46 percent pass rate for urban students). It is also reported that an average of only one-fifth of rural students manage to pass, at minimum threshold levels, their mathematics examinations. Many have advocated that a solution to this problem is to provide rural based teachers with more teaching materials and resources. However, it is even more important to consider the content and how teachers use such resources but this is commonly overlooked, issue. Even the best classroom resources in the world depend on teachers’ own interest and pedagogical knowledge to be used effectively. It is essential to empower teachers so that they feel confident in their own abilities to explain and share knowledge. Therefore, equitable education delivery is a complex chain that is affected by the provincial education department, the chronically understaffed district offices, as well as how schools use the materials and resources that they have. Teachers in schools are seldom confident and require support. It is not uncommon that teachers with a Grade 10 mathematics qualification may end up teaching Grade 12 mathematics in rural areas due to a serious shortage of qualified teachers. Needless to say, these teachers need to relate to the learning materials they use in order to effectively transfer knowledge to the students. Problems with geometry, for instance, are often related to the fact that teachers themselves struggle to understand the concepts and, thus, cannot adequately convey the information. Instead of developing teacher-training programs, the South African government actually reduced teacher training centers in the country from 120 to only 50 in the last five years, transferring them to universities that are far away from the rural settings. In addition, even the few teacher-training programs in place are based on abstract academic knowledge rather than practice.

In 2004 Helene established a formal teacher-training citizen organization (CO), Africa meets Africa. After three years of pilot projects, AmA launched its first project on Zulu beadwork, and put Helene’s vision into action. AmA has a board of directors that meets at least once a year to oversee policy and decision-making to guide organizational operations. At the center of the organization is the project team, which consists of experts in such fields as like film production, book publishing, and university teachers and researchers. The project team integrates a range of disciplines and pulls together diverse resources to articulate a clear conceptual framework that guides the entire development of relevant learning materials (from research, writing, and filming all the way to the actual teacher-training and follow up).

The development of the learning materials and teacher-training programs begin with the investigation of a particular region or cultural achievement to identify the value that can be drawn from such a culture, and how it can be applied to mathematical and scientific learning. This requires investigating contemporary educational needs and exploring the region’s cultural heritage, expression, and knowledge systems. Based on this informal research and in conjunction with expert consultants from relevant fields, the project team develops a broad theme that they can use to apply the cultural/informal knowledge to formal public school learning. Potential supporters are identified based on the theme, and funding proposals are written to finance extensive research, which is a fundamental part of the project. Once funding has been sourced, research is done to obtain relevant information that is used to develop an educational film, which is closely followed by a resource book. Together, the film and book form the core learning materials for that subject.

The whole process takes many months of consultation with various stakeholders including, community artists, traditional leaders, and heritage workers in local government. They create the relevant and applicable visual learning material, which can be infused into the formal public curriculum to aid learning. Indeed, working in close consultation with local leadership (local universities, local government and traditional bodies) is a key strategy whereby local school teachers are invited to a series of teacher-training workshops that are presented by AmA facilitators. Local master artists or craftsmen join the workshop to teach their skills to the teachers, as a practical method for mathematics learning. As rural schools are at the heart of the community, this validates inherited knowledge systems across generations. This collaboration continues after the workshop when school teachers transfer art-making skills to their students in the classroom and the artists assist again in training school students.

Implementation starts with the production of an initial 1,000 copies of books and DVDs which are distributed to teachers within the focus area through structured workshops and training sessions in collaboration with provincial and district government education departments. The learning materials are designed and linked to the national curriculum through lesson packs, which encourage teachers’ creativity in designing and developing their own lessons from the core materials. The structure, content, and methodology of each implementation program are determined by contemporary social needs and perceptions, and creates an awareness of the diverse issues in the social context of the community or region. Evaluation of the program is done a few months after implementation in the designated area by interviewing the teachers and learners to understand how well the learning methodology is being integrated into, and complementing, the formal education system.

Starting with the launch program in 2007, “Making a living through the mathematics of Zulu design,” Helene has proved her concept has become the blueprint for the programs that followed with other ethnic/cultural groups. Through the systematic strategy of research and implementation, AmA distributed approximately 1,000 copies of books and DVDs (together with lesson packs) free of charge to various teachers from KwaZulu Natal province. The learning materials were distributed at a training workshop that attracted two teachers from each of the thirty schools per educational district. Each school also received visual arts learning materials for up to 100 9th grade learners. The training was also extended to education department officials in order to ensure that they have the relevant knowledge to manage the administration of the system. In total, 900 educators were trained and equipped with relevant materials to benefit at least 50,000 students.

In just six years, the effect of Helene’s approach can be seen on several levels. It is helping to give teachers and their students a sense of success in learning and teaching, and has provided stimulation that excites and motivates them to do better. Qualitative surveys with teachers showed that, once trained in her approach, they are better able to develop important skills in their learners, such as critical thinking, investigation, observation, and design skills. Learners became more aware of the nature of mathematics and that it is not just an abstract subject but is very real and surrounds them. The beadwork served as a stepping-stone to the complex topic of patterns and the formulation of rules and ultimately to the graphs—therefore, from the concrete to the abstract. Although quantitative results in student performance takes more time to be observed, the Grade 12 exam results in KwaZulu Natal (the region where Helene started) showed marked improvement in 2010.

Based on the success of this initial program, AmA is currently developing lesson plans to aid the implementation of the Ndebele beadwork project. Helene’s Zulu beadwork project will be replicated to another forty rural schools. AmA is also implementing “Pathways through the interior” that will commence with an initial pilot project across fifteen schools in the Free State and Northern Province—a further replication of the initial program that is now extending across South Africa. On a broader scale, networks are being established at an international level to explore extending the learning methodology to Southern Africa in the form of a Pan-African framework. AmA is liaising with academic institutions and art centers such as the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African Art in Washington, DC and the Southern University in New Orleans to explore the synergies of working together to expand the idea of using traditional and cultural knowledge in formal education.

Helene was born and raised in Bloemfontein, Free State. Her father was a major influence in her life. As Supreme Court Judge and eventually Judge President of the Free State, he was known and valued as much for his humanity as his intellect. Her mother, a master embroiderer and lacemaker, helped stir her interest for the arts. Later on, her artist sister inspired in her the love for both visual arts and the monumental richness of rural tradition and culture. Educated under the guaranteed social privileges accorded by the apartheid government in the 1960s and early 1970s, Helene could not help but wonder about the cultural stagnation in her home town. She connected this to the fact that she knew very little of the neighboring Thaba’Nchu Sesotho village whose inhabitants interacted on an everyday basis with people on her side of town as domestic servants, and yet they were all South African citizens separated by political boundaries. This inspired Helene to learn as an individual, and also as an educator, the challenges of South Africa’s landscapes and the dynamics that dissolve these boundaries to unite people from diverse social backgrounds.

Thus education became her primary challenge, leading her to explore the diverse cultural contexts in South Africa and seek out, especially in rural areas, evidence of inherited South African knowledge systems. The ability, for example, of Ndebele rural painter, Francien N’demande to generate complex regular patterns in her drawings albeit with no ruler, tape or drawing plan, simply “measuring with the eye,” sparked Helene’s interest to study this phenomenon further. This pushed her to finally implement the idea she had been nurturing since the early 2000s, to study the traditional art and culture of various South African regions, extracting profound knowledge that could be integrated into the formal public learning system.

Accordingly, in 2007 Helene launched her first methodological model applied to Zulu mathematics education, focusing not on the students themselves, but on their teachers. Direct teacher support is where she saw the greatest opportunity because it is where she felt the problem lay primarily. Helene reasoned that supporting teachers would lead to advancing students, but within a meaningful and structured process. Gathering support from academics, local governments and other COs, she started testing the idea of doing mathematics through beadwork in high school. This resulted in the first book and DVD on the new learning methodology, Africa Meets Africa: Making a Living Through the Mathematics of Zulu Design, that was produced in collaboration with KwaZulu Natal Education Department. The book and DVD were used to train teachers from rural districts of KwaZulu Natal in a bid to integrate the teaching of arts and culture with mathematics in high schools. Since then, Helene has produced various learning materials in the form of DVDs, books, and lesson plans under AmA and has also pioneered several projects and exhibitions to showcase the value of tradition and culture in the South African education system.