JONATHAN JANSEN | If all our children aren’t safe none of us will be

I have a soft spot for stations such as CCFM and Radio Islam because they bring a spiritual dimension to complex questions in education. Towards the end of an interview with the former last week, one final audience question came through to me as the guest: “Where do I enrol my child when the schools all say they are full?” My instincts told me this question required more context for a helpful answer and so I asked the host to give that mother my cellphone number so she could call me. The distraught woman had no airtime, but managed a WhatsApp message for me to call her back. That was when the drama started.

The mother moves around, sleeping wherever she can find a couch for the night. The father was felled by a motorbike accident. After some probing questions, I discover the boy has been in rehabilitation (dagga, “not him, his friends”) and his academic rap sheet was not great (“it’s actually much better now”). The mother sends me a picture of a beautiful, wholesome boy. Out of school.

Then the next phone call came. This boy’s father is in prison. The mother “flits in and out of his life” and, with each of her rare visits, leaves the child in emotional distress. This is the grandmother speaking, who raises the child while holding down more than one job to keep the wolf from the door. The grandmother needs him in a school closer to home because the one many kilometres away no longer offers after-school care, which she relied on while finishing work nearby. Can I please talk to the schools nearer to home to allow the boy to enrol?

By now I knew which questions to ask. Does the boy have an excellent academic record? He did not. Does he have a record of exemplary behaviour? No. Can you afford the fees? No, but I will use the exemption application option for poorer parents. With a heavy heart, I had to tell the two women the truth. Your child is not going to get into any of your ideal schools, especially if you are on a long waiting list. Schools have a way of finding out. A simple telephone call to the previous principal will reveal the truth about destructive behaviour. A mere glance at a report card of a struggling child will keep you on a pretend waiting list until kingdom come. And schools keep their exemption applications to a bare minimum because of the significant difference between the fees charged and the subsidy paid by the department. With too many “exemption students”, a school’s finances will tank.

Schools prefer “normal” (preferably heterosexual, not-divorced) parents who will pay the fees and “normal” children who will pass their grades and stay out of trouble. The ideal child brings something to the school, such as a top hockey player or the status of a doctor father or a wealthy businessman (yep, they still tend to be men). Most South African schools care about equity and diversity about as much as the farcical television show, Love Island South Africa. It only matters when somebody makes a fuss.

All of which raises the question: where do broken children go to school? It is a question that kept me awake this past week. I felt I let down the parents by not having ready alternatives for them to pursue. Everything I know about children and learning long convinced me that if these two boys were given a solid education in a positive school environment surrounded by caring adults and appropriate services, there is a good chance they would flourish. But that means a different type of school, not one that caters only for the privileged. It also requires a different type of society, not one that celebrates only those who come through an unequal school system with seven or more distinctions at the end of grade 12.

The ugly truth is that without a good school to go to, it is more than likely these youngsters (and thousands like them) will end up on the streets, in the prison system and dead long before their time. They will wreak havoc on the lives of the poor and the privileged alike. But because we are so selfish and shortsighted, we believe that taking care of our own is enough for living the good life in SA. None of us is safe until every child is safe, secure and in a good school.