The Big Read: Try pride before a fail

There is a reason Vrygrond is unsighted from the well-tarred M5 motorway that rolls past the picturesque Marina da Gama on the other side of the road towards the white sands of Muizenberg Beach.

It is an unattractive and difficult place marked by factional violence, substance abuse and hard living. A young man or woman born in Vrygrond usually gets stuck there, trapped in a life of grinding poverty and endless misery. So it caught me by surprise when a young woman covered the 1000km on her own to Bloemfontein with her suitcase to inform me that she wanted to study. "I am from Vrygrond," she said.

Shirley's (not her real name) school marks were not good. She would need to start in a university preparation programme before embarking on formal degree studies. The university's funds were already exhausted in favour of the many poor students with good academic results.

But she was from Vrygrond, and I did not have the heart to send her all the way home. So we found some money somewhere and she made up the rest.

Through sheer grit and determination she stayed, overcoming academic deficits and financial hardships. I have no doubt that there were times when she had no idea where her next meal as a student would come from. But she pressed on.

Last week, I had one of my "Talk to Me" sessions under a tree on campus and in the long line of students waiting their turn I spotted Shirley. Eventually it was her turn. She sat down, face drawn, and shared her academic successes for the year and how she got by financially. Then something happened that caught me completely off-guard. Soft-spoken by nature, she looked me in the eye and calmly asked: "Are you proud of me, Prof?" I muttered a few words and shortly afterwards rushed towards my car and drove to my office. Nobody was going to see me cry.

The deep need we all have for affirmation is often not met, especially among young people navigating their lives through poverty, violence and poor schooling in the hope of emerging alive and educated. Parents who did not experience the affirmation of a loving parent often find it difficult to convey that they are proud, even when they are.

For my generation you knew you were loved, but hugging and the expression "I am proud of you, son" came only with the age of Oprah, when it became okay to share (and overshare) public feelings of pride in your offspring or anybody else.

Here then is a myth that must be countered. Students drop out of school and university not only because of poor teaching or unpredictable timetables or the lack of textbooks; it is, for many, also the emotional distance between teacher and learner that makes the struggle not seem worthwhile. Most children in South Africa struggle to get to school and to stay in school; that much we know. But are those struggles acknowledged to those who yearn to hear the words "I am proud of you"?

There is, of course, in Shirley a rare capacity to even pose the question. To articulate that question requires a maturity and insight into her own needs. It demands courage - asking a relative stranger to respond to an emotional need. And it involves risk; that question could be swiped aside in a clinical educator response that returns her focus to performance on tests and assignments rather than engages in the uncomfortable business of emotions.

Teachers (and students) are not trained in "creating emotionally literate classrooms", the title of Marc Brackett and Janet Kremenitzer's insightful book on the subject. Their "Ruler" approach (Recognising, Understanding, Labelling, Expressing and Regulating, emotions in the classroom) enables teachers to create the conditions that draw out students like Shirley to express emotional needs in a safe environment. In a country with broken people, here is a need that bypasses all those standardised tests preoccupied with cognitive ability.

I know South African teachers are about to cringe but shouting and screaming in your classroom creates the opposite effect; such behaviour helps produce emotionally disabled young people.

Shirley is waiting for my response. At first I try to avoid eye contact, revealing perhaps my discomfort with the emotion-laden question. Somewhere I find these unrehearsed words: "My child, I am more proud of you than you will ever know."