(Author: Honey Gluckman, Vol. 69, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2014)
For many years, I have been a ‘granny’ for children at two Primary Schools and one High School in Gauteng. This is a programme initiated by the Social Services Department of the Chevra Kadisha, through which retired persons in the community (not necessarily teachers) volunteer for an hour or more per week to act as grannies for children who, whether for academic, language or emotional reasons, need extra attention. To date, 12 schools and some 70 volunteers have joined the programme. I have been involved since 2000.1
This has been teaching at the coal face. The children I have interacted with are mostly black. The ones I requested needed help in speaking and understanding English. They all struggled with reading and with basic arithmetic. Almost all were nice kids, although many were undisciplined and some were wild. Since I was known as ‘Granny Honey’, and grannies are supposed to be warm and supportive, I had to restrain my sometimes furious reaction to their ‘naughtiness’.
My lessons consisted of playing Language Skills games. I started creating these games when I realised that my adult learner at that time simply did not know how to ask questions and instead of saying, “What is the time?” would intone, “Time is?” To get him to ask questions as a necessary part of the game, I used as my model a modified form of the well-known parlour game, Twenty Questions. Gradually I included other skills, such as scanning, reading aloud, note-taking and using logic to find an answer. An incidental objective was to learn more about animals (Animal game) and Plants (Plant game). I had all the facts checked with experts in those fields and laboriously constructed each game by hand.
Filled with confidence because I thought I knew what skills and knowledge I wanted pupils to acquire, I started to use the Animal Game. It was then that I first became bemused by the reactions of children. Why? Because I had forgotten that I did not know what Grade Seven pre-teenagers wanted. After the one team asked only two or three questions from a Question Card, they would correctly guess the name of the animal on the Game Card held by the opposing team. At first I was filled with admiration for their knowledge and skill in logically working out the correct animal on the basis of so few answers. Then the truth struck me. Each Game Card, consisting of twelve simple sentences, was illustrated with a picture of that particular animal. Once the light shone through the thin cardboard held by the one team, the wise guys from the opposing team were able to see that picture. I instructed the holder of the Game Card to hide it on his lap. He did so but bent and mutilated what had taken me hours to construct. Later I revised the Animal and Plant games and enclosed them in a plastic cover with another piece of thin cardboard behind the printed card to frustrate the cheaters.
My second surprise was the reaction to the Game Card describing an Owl. The final question on the Card was “Are you afraid of this animal?” Most of the children throughout the years answered with an emphatic “YES!” When asked why, they stated either that seeing such birds brought bad luck, or they presaged a death of a loved one. “But an Eagle Owl once perched on a tree in my garden for many days and no bad luck or death followed,” I protested. Whereupon various children would emphatically quote examples of how owls had brought bad luck to their families.
This brings up a moral dilemma. Do I, as an educator, much less a ‘granny’, have the duty or even the right to question what I regard as superstitions but which may be cultural or even religious beliefs? Two of my adult learners, one an intelligent woman, begged me to chase away that menacing owl; the other, a semi-literate man, asserted that evil witches exist and that witch doctors were superior to medical doctors. Was I right to deride these beliefs when many ideologies and religions that can be subject to criticism are respected and even devoutly followed? South Africa is a multicultural society. Should I not equally respect the cultural beliefs of those I interact with? My philosophical meanderings have led me to this tentative conclusion: I will respect the religious creeds of those, for example, who will eat only Kosher or Halaal food. I would definitely try to dissuade those who believe it is acceptable to burn witches, kill owls or buy powdered rhino horn.
Yet another surprise occurred when my Grade 6’s were playing the Plant game. The chosen card featured a Lemon. It was described as ‘being round or oval with a nipple or bulge at one end.’ As I always do with unfamiliar words, I asked if they knew what a nipple was. They shook their heads so I pointed to where my nipples are and asked them to point to their own nipples. They did so and then started to giggle uncontrollably. Bewildered, I asked why they were laughing. Pointing to the picture of the bulge in the lemon, I said “Can you see that this looks like a nipple?” I was met with more giggles from the two girls and two boys. Thinking that they were embarrassed by the idea of my mentioning that part of my body, I sententiously launched into a speech explaining that all body parts are natural and have important functions, particularly a woman’s nipples, and should be spoken about without embarrassment. At the word ‘nipples’ the laughter started again. As I drew breath to continue with my homily, Nonto spluttered out, “But nipples is such a funny word!” That shut me up.
While typing this, I was about to add that children can be so silly at times. Then I remembered the principal of my school many years ago, introducing a guest lecturer with these words. “This is Mr. Foot. He will be talking to you about….” I can’t say what his topic was or what he said in his speech because at the words, “Mr. Foot” I felt bubbles of laughter gathering in my ten year-old body and forcing their way upwards. No matter how hard I tried, my giggling was uncontrollable. Mr. Foot! So easily we forget that children are not undersized adults but have their own way of relating to the world.
In the Animal Game, the card for a Man always elicited great interest. Once the group had discovered that this mammal had two legs and the sound he made was talking, they had no trouble in guessing a Human Being. But for this card I had included simple drawings of the conception of a baby from fertilisation of the egg by sperm, through the growth of the foetus, to birth. They were fascinated by this and after initial embarrassment looked closely at the pictures and threw out question after question.
This proved to be a good topic to stimulate the asking of questions. As many educationists have pointed out, the art and science of questioning, as opposed to giving predetermined answers to a teacher’s queries, is an essential key to gaining knowledge. Very young children instinctively know this and incessantly ask questions but, sadly, this skill is often knocked out of them as they progress in school. Thus, when Jacob asked me what sperm was, having previously told them not to be ashamed of talking about their bodies, I for one wild moment considered saying “Sperm is contained in the semen of a male which he ejaculates from his penis into the vagina of a woman he is having sex with.” Then hypocritical sanity prevailed. Besides that doesn’t really explain what a sperm is, so I muttered something about tiny cells and turned thankfully to Mary whose hand had been waving wildly in the air in her eagerness to tell us about her new-born baby sister.
After inventing the Animal and the Plant game, I realised that I had to have some way of teaching phonics and spelling. Unfortunately, English has different ways of spelling the same sound. So I made up a whole lot of cards based on the card game of Happy Families. Then I put each member of a particular family on a different card and gave them a family name like Green Queen for the twelve different ways to spell EE sounds or Lord Norman for the ten different spellings of OR sounds. Each player was given seven cards each and had to negotiate with another player to get a full house of no more than two families. After testing out the game with my grandchild, I felt confident of its success with the Grade Seven children I was helping.
Or so I thought. But to my surprise, for a few anal retentive children it didn’t work. What mattered to them was not winning, but preventing their opponents from winning. So they would hold onto cards they didn’t need, because by handing them over, their opponents would be able to get a full house. When I softly pointed out that they had lost an opportunity to acquire their own full house, I would be met with a condescending smile. I obviously knew nothing about how cards should be played. I gave up.
Many years later I was given Grade Five groups and I had to work hard to get them to understand how to play this game. For example, I spent quite a few minutes with Pindi. I asked her which family of the cards she held had the most members. “Ben the Best,” she replied. “Good”, I said, “Do you have any other family with more than one member?”
She looked at her cards: “Strong Tom”. “Right. Now which cards do you hold that you don’t want?” She pointed to Sad Sam. “Okay. Now ask Dina if she has a card that will grow the members of bigger families you already have.” Said Pindi, “Dina, do you have Sad Sam?”
“Yes, “said Dina. “Will you give it to me in exchange for Ben the Best?”
I had the same reaction from Nandi. This time I tried a slightly different tack:
“How many cards do you have for Strong Tom?”
“Three”.
“How many for Green Queen?”
“Two”.
“Good. How many for Lord Norman?”
“One”
“Good. Now do business with Lerato”.
“Lerato, do you have Lord Norman?”
I crushed an impulse to scream. Was it my fault that these two children could not play properly? Was I using language that they could not understand? Perhaps I was talking too quickly. Yet they seemed to understand most of what I asked. What was I missing?
On one occasion, the children had to explain the meaning of ‘brooch’, a word that does not follow any spelling rule. I told them a story about Ellen, whose mother wanted to buy her a birthday present. They looked at necklaces, which hang around one’s neck, bracelets that fit around the wrist and brooches that are pinned onto one’s clothes. Ellen chose a brooch and pinned it onto her blouse. Then I asked, “What is a brooch?” Angel shot up her hand, her face split in a wide beaming smile: “A necklace,” she shouted triumphantly.
Am I expecting too much?
The children also played a basic arithmetic game I had invented many years before, when my same adult learner struggled to add on the 10% for General Sales Tax. When the tax was raised to 14%, my heart sank and I knew I had to produce a game that taught basic arithmetic in a fun way. I made it a competition between players using cards with different numbers of squares on them that could be concretely counted. I included dice and a timer and a marker in the form of a coin that had to be moved along the card according to the throw of the dice and the calculation to be done, whether addition, subtraction, multiplication or division
The children all loved playing the game, but I was horrified to see that while they could add simple numbers together, the multiplication could only be done by laboriously counting fingers. I found this lack of multiplication skill in all grades. When I queried this with a teacher, I was informed that children were required to be able only to work out the answer by constant adding, but were not expected to learn the tables off by heart. The mental arithmetic I had been drilled in was no longer used.
Vusi, in Grade 6, had problems in basic arithmetic. I thought at first that, like the other children, he had not been expected to learn tables by heart. But when faced with working out 3 x 5, even using his fingers to add 5+ 5 + 5, he would struggle to get the answer. So I brought him a packet of beans, drew Plus, Minus and Equals signs and asked him to take a handful of beans, put them to one side, then take another handful of beans, and put the plus sign between them. Then he had to count the first pile, write down how many there were, then the second pile, write down their number, put the two piles together, count them all and write the answer down next to the equals sign. After demonstrating this, I asked him to show me what to do. Vusi went through the procedure correctly, but when it was time to add the two piles together, he came up with the wrong answer. My heart sank. Obviously the child had not even mastered the one- to- one correspondence necessary for being able to count.
This was a problem for far too many of the children I interacted with. What worried and upset me was that these children were in Grades 5, 6 or even 7. How did they get so high up if they could not even add 28+3 and get the right answer? Again after querying this, I was told that by order of the Education Department, only a few children from each grade were permitted to fail. The rest had to be promoted to the next grade. The result? Children with hardly any concept of basic arithmetic were being promoted into high school. No wonder the numeracy rate of South African children is so abysmally low.
Many years ago, I read a science fiction short story about a world in which citizens were forced to rely completely on calculators. One person decided to teach people how to add, subtract etc. His motto was “Each man his own calculator.” If I remember correctly, he was put to death.
Participating schools also have problems in accepting grannies. One is finding venues for them to teach in. At first, I was given various rooms on the south side of the building, where during winter time, I actually felt glacially paralysed by the time I had been there for three hours. So when I was told that I could now use an abandoned house situated at the far end of the main school, I grabbed the dilapidated room facing north and declared that I was happy to teach there, sagging ceiling, broken doors and floors and all. It was warm there, so when the children arrived late, I simply read my newspaper until they came.
But often they didn’t, so I would go looking for them. This involved a five minute walk and a climb up a slight slope to get to the upper level. Then I would stride towards the school hoping to see a teacher I knew so that she could send a child to fetch my absent kids. Eventually, some of my loiterers would come strolling out towards me. I would ask where the others were, and send one of them to fetch the missing children. Then I would return to the house and wait. And wait. Twenty minutes into the lesson, I would see them. Would they be hurrying to get to me? Of course not. I would see them running, but backwards and forwards as they happily wrestled with one another. On finally storming into the room, they would promptly hide in the empty cupboards. Grannies aren’t supposed to scream, so I would ‘calmly’ ask them to sit down. By the time they did, my one hour activity had been reduced by half.
The nice thing about helping at my second school was that I never had to wait more than five minutes for my four or five pupils to arrive. But one day, the children did not arrive at the appointed time. I went looking for them and spoke to their teacher, who reluctantly released them. A few weeks later, they simply did not come and eventually I left. The next term, I spoke to the liaison teacher about this and she assured me that coming to my classes was important for the pupils. However, two weeks later, I got a strange message via one of the children: “My teacher said to tell you that we will be late.” On being asked why, she replied that they had to stick their tests into their books. I was bewildered. Why did it have to be done at that time? Nevertheless, I said nothing and some 15 minutes later, the group arrived. The following week, I again received a message from one of the children saying they would be late because “something urgent had to be done.” This time, one of the senior teachers who overheard this said snapped, “Tell your teacher it can be done later and come to granny.”
I began to get uncomfortable. Obviously this woman resented the children being with me. Once more, I approached the liaison teacher, who assured me that she would speak to said teacher since it was important that the children come to me and she must accept that. But why did she resent me? Because I was white? Because the children liked coming to my lessons? Because she felt I was undermining her? I hoped it could be sorted out. I am a guest at the school and though most of the teachers greet me happily enough, I still do not want to alienate any of them.
Nor did I want to alienate any of the pupils when they used unacceptable language. When I was a child, I was taught that there were certain ‘rude’ words that one did not speak aloud. Even today, I feel uncomfortable when I hear or read these words. Not so the children in my groups. On one occasion, they rushed for the door or a window, frantically waving their hands in the air. When I asked what was going on, one of the girls pointed disgustedly at a boy and accused him of the dastardly crime of polluting the air. It is possible that such words are common usage, so I replied, “So?” and told them to sit down. They reluctantly did so, still attempting to waft away the offending smell.
It was different at the second school. Dina who is large and fat but very enthusiastic, asked if she could go to the toilet. I said, “You can go at break in a few minutes.” She replied, “I want to fart, so can I go outside now?” Taken aback, all I could do was nod. A few weeks later, Thabo, a sweet boy from a different class said suddenly “May I move away to fart?” I hastily gave him permission and he went to the other end of the classroom. This asking for permission makes me wonder if this school has such a rule and if so, how is it worded and how is it communicated to the children?
Despite liaison teachers thanking volunteers for the valuable work they do and insisting that the children have benefited from our help, I still feel frustrated at the end of the year because we get no individual feedback. Did we really help the children? Which children benefited from our visits? Which did not?
Here is an example of one child with whom I had no success at all. I will call her Pretty. She was an unpleasant girl aged about eleven or twelve and was part of a group of six from Grade Six that came to me for an hour every week. Pretty was aggressive and disruptive and fought with every other pupil, reaching across and snatching their belongings and interrupting when they spoke. She refused to do anything I suggested and paid no attention to what I said.
With some small knowledge of child psychology, I tried everything I could to get her to cooperate and take part in the language skills games being played. Nothing helped.
Finally, I gave her two pieces of paper and asked her to draw her family on the one piece, and write about them on the other. She drew nine people; two were very large figures whom she wrote were getting married. Pretty herself was drawn as big as them, but her mother was very tiny, as was her father, though slightly larger than his wife. Large flowers were dotted throughout the page and rain drops covered everything. At the bottom was written ‘A Rainy Day Today’. What was more interesting was what she wrote on the second page: “I love all my family I have. I love all of them and they love me all. I love them (repeated seven times to the bottom of the page, followed by “The end of my family”). When I showed this to a colleague, she said, “Those aren’t raindrops. They are tears.” I felt for Pretty, but was unable to get through to her. Since every lesson was an exhausting fight, I told the liaison teacher that I could not cope with her and she was withdrawn from the group
Here, however, follow some instances where what I did may have had some effect.
Vuyo was a boy in Grade 6. He was able to answer many questions that the other children could not. He was keen and interested, but struggled to read. For half the year, I tried to help him but with three other children in the group, this was difficult. Eventually I went to the liaison teacher and said I wanted to take Vuyo for an individual half an hour reading lesson after the others had left. She informed me that he was very backward and would be going to a special school the following year. I protested that he seemed to be intelligent and keen to learn, so she agreed to my suggestion. His own teacher, however, said he could not come to both sessions. I accepted this but the next week there he was at the group lesson and he stayed for the reading lesson. ‘What will your teacher say?” I asked. He ignored the question and continued to come for both sessions.
He loved the lessons and refused to stop reading when I said the time was up. In the few months we were together, he was able to go through four reading books in the series I was using and to recognise various phonic combinations. But then the year ended and I did not see him again. Success? I don’t know. He certainly could not read at Grade Six level (very few of the children could). But I do know that he was able to read what he could not before and that he loved doing so.
Malusi was in Grade Seven. He was naughty, disruptive, and difficult to control. He came late to lessons and often ignored what he was asked to do but would cheerfully agree to behave when I remonstrated with him, and tried to convince him of the educational consequences of his behaviour. However, the following week he was back to his usual cheeky disruptiveness.
At the end of the year assembly for all the children and the teachers, prizes were given out and small gifts were given to us volunteers. When my name was called, the principal stepped back and said, “Malusi has asked if he could give you your gift.” I was surprised but there he came with a shy smile on his face. “Malusi,” I said, “I am going to give you a big hug,” which I did to enthusiastic applause from the children. He handed me the gift and went back to his seat. Maybe I did get through to him.
Zanele was about 15. She was a French- speaking immigrant from an African state and was given to me in the belief I could help her improve her reading and her English, since I had some knowledge of French. Zanelle was sullen and uninterested. Sometimes she would come to a lesson, but not often. If she was there, I attempted to help her, but got nowhere.
One day she pitched up. I had with me the Pirate reading books that I always use to teach reading. I gave her Book Seven from the series and told her to read to herself until I was ready for her. After ten minutes she looked at me but I said she must go on reading. This happened several times. I watched her closely until I saw that she was no longer looking up at me but had become engrossed in the story. When the bell rang, she reluctantly closed the book. “Did you enjoy it?” I asked. She nodded hesitantly. I thought no more about her.
At the end of year assembly, I was once more called up to receive my small gift. As I turned to go back to my seat, I saw Zanele walking up to the platform. She climbed the few stairs, came straight to me and handed me a wrapped gift she had obviously bought for me. She said nothing and walked down again. The gift was a cheap ornament, but the thought was beautiful.
For this example, I was of indirect help. There was a young girl, Thlogi, aged perhaps ten or eleven, in my Grade Five group. Her clothes were ragged and during winter all she had to keep her warm was a very torn cardigan. She was able to do the sums for the Arithmetic Game, but after her turn her head would go down on the table. For months I ignored this, but eventually when everyone had left I asked her why always put her head down. She replied that she was always tired. When I asked why, she said she didn’t know but that her mother had taken her to a clinic to find out. Obviously, the clinic could not help since she was still tired. I then asked what time she went to bed, and on being told ten o’clock, asked why she did not go earlier. “I have to do work for my mother” she said. I was dismayed to learn that she got up at five, since her mother required her to dress the young children and do other things. I did not know the situation at her home so did not want to judge her mother. Instead I asked if she slept well while in bed. “No. I often wet my bed and this wakes me up.” She replied. Really concerned now, I asked whether something was worrying her so as to cause this bedwetting.
“Yes. They all tease me and my mother shouts at me.”
“Who teases you?”
“My uncle.”
With the plethora of paedophile cases constantly being reported, I felt a shiver of alarm.
She added, “And my mother often hits me. With a feather duster.” I was afraid to ask which end she used.
I reported the matter to the vice principal who agreed there was a problem. Later that morning, he brought Thlogi’s teacher to me, a young pleasant-looking woman. I told the story again and she thanked me. A few days later, a poster was put up outside the Media room, advising children who were being sexually abused to report the matter and gave the necessary phone number.
Was my suspicion correct? Whatever the case, after the holidays, Thlogi came bouncing into the room and happily greeted me. Afterwards, I asked her if she was getting enough sleep, and she nodded, saying that now she was going to bed at nine and getting up at seven. She also no longer was wetting her bed and no longer worried about the ‘teasing’. Obviously someone had interceded on her behalf. But she still puts her head down on the desk.
The Granny Program has also led to indirect benefits. My daughter and I were discussing discussed what we were doing for Mandela Day, and my ten year-old grandson asked what he might do. Since he was a good Chess player, I undertook to speak to someone at the school to see if he might spend 67 minutes teaching four children how to play that game. This was arranged with a senior teacher, who was thrilled by the offer. Eventually, the 67 minutes spread out to an hour every week for eighteen months to date, and the four children became over forty children who could now play Chess. Again I realised how from small beginnings, many benefits can flow.
For this concluding granny experience, I am going to use the real name of the pupil. Arnold Malamba, a small boy, aged about eleven, wandered into the school and asked in halting English to be allowed to learn. He had no papers, had never been to school, and could neither read nor write, nor work with numbers. He was an immigrant from an African state. His father had been murdered and his mother had dumped him and gone with his sister to France, leaving him behind in the care of some people. She promised to send for him but never did. The principal took him in and asked me to help him. He was put into Grade Two and came to me for three periods each week. During those periods, along with his Grade Two teacher, I attempted to teach him to read. At the end of the year he was promoted into Grade Four. In the following year, I took him alone for an hour every week.
His questions astounded me. He asked about the workings of his body, about the sun and moon and stars, about God. I abandoned the elementary reading books I had been using and brought instead a simply-written Science Encyclopaedia and my grandson’s Magic Bus books which deal with scientific matters in a simple but humorous way. He would ask to take a book home, then laboriously copy out a whole article then try to read it to me. This, in his second year of schooling. At the end of the year, he was promoted to Grade Six.
The following year Arnold, now much taller, reappeared in one of my groups. I protested he no longer needed me, but he said he wanted to come. Then he disappeared for a few weeks. When he came back he told me that he had had a problem. His mother had not sent his ‘guardians’ any money, so they had kicked him out. Social Security had then taken him to a Street Children refuge. He was there for a while until his mother once more sent money to his guardians. Then he again disappeared from my group.
At the beginning of the final term he came again, waited for the others to leave, then told me he was being sent to Cape Town. He was very unhappy. He did not know why he had to leave, or whether he was going to a house or a shack in a squatter camp. He did not know with whom he would be staying or whether he would be able to go to school. I gave him my address and phone number and asked him to write and tell me his news. Afterwards, I realised he might not even have the money to do so.
Much later, I was idly paging through the children’s exercise books in which they did work for me, and I found the following in his book, obviously written during that class.
Dear Granny Hanny,
I would like to say thank you for everything you have teached me these three years. You have teached me things no one ever did. Now is time to say goodbye. I will miss you. Bye. Love you forever.
From Arnold.
I wept. I wept for a young boy, my grandson’s age, who in his short life had known only tragedy and abandonment and later, the indifference of guardians who even begrudged him the food he ate. All the children in the school knew him as a role model because he had fought so hard to learn, to become someone. Yet now, he was once more being thrown out, discarded. I have not heard from him since.
A little while ago, I sent a message to an Arnold Malamba on Facebook. There was no reply. at is why
I have given his full name in the hope that someone reading this might know someone who knows someone who could tell me where Arnold is.
Honey Gluckman is a former lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at JCE, now the Education Faculty of Wits. Her subjects included Philosophy of Education, with an emphasis on Critical Analysis. She is today part of the ‘Granny Program’ run by the Chevra Kadisha, assisting young black learners in acquiring language skills using educational games she has developed.
NOTES
- For obvious reasons, I have not identified the schools concerned in this article, while changing the names of the children featured.
