Social media was of course bursting at the seams with pride this week.
You couldn’t scroll for a second without spotting a post from a proud parent whose teenager had made it through matric.
And I want to congratulate all of you who managed to pass, with or without distinctions.
By the way, the Western Cape managed to get the most distinctions in the country, which is a point of great pride.
And those of you who didn’t pass, don’t despair.
Register for the Supplementaries and work hard at improving your marks.
Now that that is out of the way, I want to address a very sensitive subject that was raised by one of my Facebook friends.
No, it’s not how the lowering of the Maths pass bar may have impacted on what is being celebrated as the highest matric pass rate since the advent of our
democracy.
Although those are statistics that definitely need to be crunched, just so we don’t live in a fantasy world of fake academic excellence.
At the risk of being exclusionary, my Facebook friend wanted to know what happened to all the coloured top performers.
Now, I don’t want to take away from the three top performers in the country, who all hail from schools in this province.
They worked hard for the achievement and deserve every bit of recognition and celebration in their honour.
And they definitely shouldn’t pay attention to my ranting about the under-achievement of others.
Because of our history, white kids have long since understood the power of a good education.
And while many of them still have the resource-advantage, many black kids in poor schools have proven that hungry determination can be their own advantage.
So you have one group with so many resources that failure would require extra-special effort; and on the other end, a group for whom success would require an almost superhuman effort, but would also mean a boost out of poverty.
But where does that leave the coloured kids from the Cape Flats?
Many of them are gifted with awesome intellect and academic potential.
Their schools always had just enough to make do, but never enough to excel with.
They are not starving most days, so there’s no desperate hunger to escape poverty.
But they also don’t get exposed to their dreams, so there’s no casual acceptance of eventual success. No inspiration!
By that I mean, the country’s top matriculant, Madelein Dippenaar had the opportunity to visit Nasa in America while at school.
JOY: Settlers High matric class. Picture: COURTNEY AFRICA/AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY/ANA
If she wasn’t already inspired, speaking to astronauts made it easier to believe that her dream of becoming a molecular biologist will be realised one day.
Between the lure of gangsterism, the prioritising of all things fashion, and the enabling, lawnmower parenting, coloured kids are losing their drive and determination to succeed.
It seems they are the ones most susceptible to instant gratification, rather than learning the patience needed to achieve long-term goals.
And we the parents are the ones to blame, because we confuse loving our kids with immediately satisfying their every demand.
We need to help inspire them, help them touch and experience their futures somehow, so that they can achieve Coloured Excellence.