If Gangs Are Winning, Are Schools Losing?
The previous blog ended with a bold statement: gangs are gaining power in South Africa because they fulfil needs that society often neglects. This leads to an important question: if gangs are succeeding in this area, are schools failing? Unfortunately, they are, and for the same reasons. Both gangs and schools are vying for the […]
The Reason Why Gangsterism Wins
We keep asking the wrong question about South Africa. We ask why young people join gangs, why teenagers drink themselves stupid behind the school hall, why a fifteen-year-old in Manenberg or Hanover Park would trade his future for a corner and a gun. We ask as if the answer is mysterious. It isn’t. The answer […]
Self-Discovery Starts Beneath the Skin
Ask a Grade 8 learner who she is, and she will tell you what she wears, what she watches, and who she sits with at break. Ask again, and she will run out of answers somewhere around the second sentence. This is not her failure. It is ours. We have built an entire schooling system […]
Why Talking At Your Children Is Quietly Breaking Them
There is a sentence I have heard parents say to me, almost word-for-word, in different rooms and communities for the better part of my Life. It goes something like this: “I talk to my child all the time. I have no idea why she won’t open up to me.” I believe them. They do talk […]
We Can’t Give What We Haven’t Built in Ourselves!
A week ago, a three-part series was offered. Mattering, Formation, Adult Responsibility: three blogs, one argument, one closing call to the grown-ups in young people’s lives to stop diagnosing the youth and start examining ourselves. In the week since, we pondered the question, which many readers may have had and who may have taken the […]
The Adult Is the Curriculum
Part 3 in a Rudder4Life Series on the Quiet Crises Shaping South Africa’s Young Where we have been Part 1 asked whether a child knows they matter. Part 2 asked who they are becoming. This final reflection turns the conversation in a direction that is harder to write and, frankly, harder to sit with. It […]
Children Matter. Now, Who Are They Becoming?
Part 2 of a Rudder4Life Series on the Quiet Crises Shaping South Africa’s Young Where Part 1 left us In our last blog, we answered a question drawn from Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Never Enough and Dr Mark Potterton’s Daily Maverick reflection on it: Does this child know they matter? We made the case that a […]
Children Matter: Our Answer to The Achievement Trap
Part 1 of a Rudder4Life Series on the Quiet Crises Shaping South Africa’s Young South Africa celebrated the Class of 2025’s record 88% matric pass rate, then, almost in the same breath, returned to its more familiar mood: anxiety. Twenty-five applicants for every seat at UCT or Wits. A youth unemployment rate above 62% for […]
8 Truths That Will Change How You See Yourself
There’s a moment most of us know well. You walk into a room, a classroom, a boardroom, or a party, and something inside you shrinks. Not because the room is dangerous, nor because you’re incapable, but because a voice you’ve carried since childhood whispers, “I’m not quite enough for this.“ That voice isn’t the truth. […]
Why Our Children Need Whole-Mind Learning
Part 4 Throughout this series, we’ve explored why teaching kids about feelings is as important as maths, how to make social, emotional, and academic learning work in practice, and what university engineering programs teach us about whole-child development (Read here). Now we arrive at a deeper question: what happens when our entire education system becomes […]