How The "Spiritually Gifted" Learners add to the Chaos At Schools

 
As of late, violence and chaos have been disturbing the learning process in the Katlehong schools. Learners have been reported to have beat up their fellow mates and their teachers. This has prompted the communities near the schools to intervene and try to solve these problems themselves with the help of other stake holders. i was invited by the parents to help them come up with solutions to these issues.

We visited two schools in Katlehong, Fumana and Alafang, and our first task was to really look deeper and see the possible root causes of these problems. It did not take long for me to spot one possible root cause. Most of the classes we visited in these schools, if not all, had two or more learners who underwent "ukuthwasa". For those who do not know, Ukuthwasa is the Sacred process that trains African traditional doctors, prophets and herbsman. This than means, these schools have people with extra ordinary needs and extra ordinary abilities. This contributes to the Chaos and Violence in the schools in three ways:

 

1: The Clash OF Spirits

African traditional herbsman, healers and prophets are guided by different(yet one) spirits that operate in different realsm with different rules and elements. It happens a lot more that one individual guided by an air spirit with clash with one guided by a earth spirit. The presence of the air spirit may introduce a element in the classroom that will irritate the earth spirit. The clash of these spirits will result in commotion taking place in the classroom, some learners will suddenly get angry, others suddenly feel sad then a lot of emotional mix up will take place resulting in disruption in a form of chaos, verbal altercation or physical violence.

The nature of the disruption will always differ based on the cause of the spiritual clash. sometimes it might be that there is a sick leaner in class that the spiritually gifted learner will pick up and respond negatively, here the spirit guiding the gifted leaner is fighting the spirit that makes the other learner sick, instances will always differ but alternately will disrupt the teaching and learning process.

 

2: Suppressive Learning environment

The learning environment in South Africa has been designed to produce slaves for the western world and its companies that are operating through out Africa. The design does not accommodate Africans, it is a cut and paste of the western schools, the same goes for our curriculum. Had it been designed by Africans for Africans prosperity, it will accommodate the Spiritually gifted learners. It sadly does not, and this agitates the spirits that lead those learners who are spiritually gifted.

There is a dress code that spiritually gifted people should adhere to. The colors on their garments are not theatrics but are key to keeping the guardian spirts in good harmony with those whom are guided by them. I realized that in these schools, the learners are not allowed to wear they full garments, they are obliged to mix up their garments with school uniform. This can agitate the guardian spirit and chaos can unfold.

Classes in these schools are usually crowded. Spiritually gifted people need a less saturated space to be able to be in constant communication with their guiding spirits, whereas this is not the case, they may feel empty, sad or angry and then start disturbing classes. The large amounts of notes and class-work that is staffed on to these kids makes contributes to their anger as they need time and space to connect with their guardian spirits.

I know to most these observations will not seem to be a contributing factor to the chaos in the schools, some may say that because I am not convincing enough or because my observations are unscientific. Whatever reason you might have to dispute this observation will in time be proven wrong by the escalating violence in schools and ultimately the communities in which the schools are based. More people will start making these observations in the months and years to come, and I believe others will make more convincing case studies and arguments but I hope it will not be too late by them.

Tis calls for the department of education to act swiftly and start building schools for the spiritually gifted learners, they too have special education needs and the constitution protects their right to education and their right to education should be kept from interfering with other children's rights to education.