Maybe uncover some new cases of abuse instead of rehashing the old ones?

I’ve watched the first two episodes of the School Ties series on M-Net and find myself wondering what the point of it is.

Child abuse, sexual and other, is entirely reprehensible and it must be rooted out by whatever means. The power that coaches and teachers have over the children in their care can be abused, and that is happening in schools, and sports clubs.

There have been enough cases in the media to show that this has happened in some of the so-called elite schools in this country and, clearly, schools have a duty to ensure that these things should never happen in their communities.

That’s non-debatable. But why, I wonder, is M-Net regurgitating cases from the not so recent past? Apart from anything else, it’s lazy journalism. The two episodes so far deal with the David McKenzie affair at St Andrew’s College and Collan Rex’s conviction of hundreds of cases at Parktown Boys’ High. Both of those were covered in the My Only Story podcast three years ago, and in the press. They were repeated in an edition of Carte Blanche earlier this year. Samantha Cowan wrote a book (her School Ties title has been appropriated for this series) and she features on camera in the Parktown episode, repeating her conclusions.

Episode two ended with a teaser indicating that the next story will be that of the tragic events at St John’s Prep School and College, which were also aired in that Carte Balance edition.

There’s no harm in retelling these stories and in analysing their significance, again and again - if they act as a cautionary tale and constantly sharpen awareness among children and their parents. I think it might have been more valuable, however, if the makers of this series had rather gone looking for other incidents (and the experts quoted intimate that these things are quite common in our schools).

The real problem, I feel, is that the schools involved are not being helped by the re-opening of these cases. There doesn’t seem to be much confidence in their ability to proceed down a different path, committed to being the sorts of places where these things cannot happen again. 

The statements by the schools are displayed, without comment, but I get the feeling that they are being perceived as empty promises. Whether those cases were rogue outliers or part of an established toxic system, as alleged by some of the experts, the schools now have a duty to carry on educating their learners in many complex ways. That’s difficult enough without being made to account again for matters closed some time ago, and without being left alone to carry on with the process of rebuilding and continuing to safeguard those in their care.

I also have a particular problem with something that was said at the end of the 1st episode. Deon Wiggett, the My Only Story man, fires a broadside at the sport of water polo and, in it, he repeats the statement he made in the last of those podcasts that Mark Evans, a teacher and polo coach at DSG in Grahamstown, had been accused of inappropriate behaviour by some of the girls he coached.

Evans was suspended by the school, pending a Disciplinary Enquiry. In January 2022 I got hold of a letter sent to the DSG community by the headmaster in which he details the process followed in the enquiry (a legally sound and exhaustive one) and announces that Evans was found not guilty of all the charges.

He quotes the findings of Advocate Ryno Eksteen, the independent chairman of the DE:

He was satisfied that the evidence presented did not support the conclusion that the teacher concerned had acted inappropriately or had failed to conform to DSG’s standards of conduct and the SACE Code of Conduct in his interaction with learners.

He specifically found no evidence of the teacher making undue physical contact with learners or intruding on their dignity in any manner (whether while coaching water polo or in the classroom).

In a letter to its parents, written after the airing of the School Ties programme, the school explains that while the investigation initiated by DSG was being conducted and the disciplinary enquiry concluded, the South African Council for Educators (SACE) was conducting its own investigation, which was concluded in March 2022. On 25 May 2022, DSG received the findings of the SACE Ethics Committee in a formal communication, which informed the school that an investigation into the allegations had been conducted, and the Council could not find sufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations. On 31 March 2022, the Ethics Committee deliberated on the matter and recommended that the file be closed pending new/tangible information. 

As a result of those findings Evans was reinstated as a teacher. Is repeating the allegations, despite the exoneration, permissible? Surely it can’t be left there?

I assume M-Net is getting the viewership numbers it is hoping for with this production. I wonder where they will be going to after St John’s. Will they then do their jobs as investigative journalists and uncover a new case? And will they leave the schools already affected alone to carry out the duty of care that we all demand of them? 

    

Full on commitment, with smiles on faces

 

Just when the immovable weight of win-at-all costs schoolboy rugby was getting me down, I was given a breath of fresh air on Wednesday night, and a reminder of the value of organised activity for school kids; of the willingness of children to work extremely hard if it’s at something they love doing; and of the skill, dedication and passion that adults (teachers and others) have for setting up learning experiences for those children.

And it came in, for me, a strange place, an area I know very little of – music. Jeppe are hosting a cultural festival this week – an attempt to give their non-sporting stars a taste of what the rugby and other sports team get when they are invited to the various interschool gatherings every year.

Wednesday night was a music festival and I was roped in to go along and take pictures. There were seven schools there – choirs, marimbas and bands – and it was just amazing. I was a reluctant audience member at first but I came away awed.

Clearly you don’t get to be as good as those singers and players are without hours and hours of practice (probably more than the sportsmen put in), and it made (to my uneducated ear, anyway) for some top class performances from everyone.

What really struck me, though, was that everyone – on stage and off – seemed to be having the time of their lives. They performed with joy when they were up there, and they were on their feet and invested when they were in the audience. And there was whole-hearted appreciation and acclaim from everyone for everyone else.

I sat surrounded by them and experienced the amazing way in which they sang their own words, in perfect harmony, along with what was being played onstage. It was the magic of musicians jamming along that I’ve read about but never really seen.

And during interval there was an impromptu massed choir involving just about everyone, outside the hall singing, beautifully, a song that they somehow all knew the words of.

I know there are interschool competitions in some of these activities, Wednesday wasn’t one, yet I saw commitment and passion equal to what you see at 1^st team rugby matches, and it all happened with wide, white-toothed smiles on faces, everywhere.

It’s unfair to single any one act out, but if I ever get the chance to watch the Parktown Boys’ High School brass band again, or the Greenside High School choir, I’m grabbing it.

These players are no good - let's buy some new ones

 

There’s been a bit of chatter recently about an old, unoriginal issue – recruitment of schoolboy rugby players.

I read everything that Alan Miles publishes on his blog - https://coachtalk.wordpress.com - he eloquently expresses views on school sport that I whole heartedly agree with.

His most recent piece, titled Integrity-driven success in schoolboy rugby dives into the pretty much ubiquitous (among the top rugby schools anyway) area of recruitment. He’s talking about the practice of attracting players to your school on bursaries, who would otherwise not have come there on their own.

While there may be good reasons to give a boy an opportunity when, for financial reasons, he would never have gone to a certain school, his ability to help your 1st team win matches shouldn’t be one of them.

Miles goes on to list a number of things that are wrong with pursuing success by following that route. The pressure on the player who knows he is only there to win games for the school; the obscene sums of money spent on recruitment, and how it could be used to develop all the players in the school; the absence of old-fashioned teacher-coaches in the system; the instilling of dreams of post-school glory in the minds of those players, knowing full well that very few of them will make it to the professional level.

I was tempted to throw my two cents in after reading that, but resisted, mainly because it makes me look like an old fogey who tells the same stories over and over. But then I was sent a link to a voice clip originating, it seems, from an Old Boys/Supporters WhatsApp group discussing what needs to be done following yet another defeat for their school’s 1^st team.

After listening to it, I was reminded of the title of Alan Mile’s piece – Integrity-driven success in schoolboy rugby – and it occurred to me that you could use what’s being proposed as an example what integrity-driven success definitely is not!

I’m not going to put the link up. It’s the sort of thing that gets around, so I’m sure many of you have heard it already. I’m not going to be the one who spreads these sorts of things, and it’s not an original story - the exact conversation takes place in many schools these days. I’d wager.

I’ll tell you briefly what was said, and what is wrong with it.

In essence, the speaker informs us that the coaches have gone as far as they can go with the 1^st team – these players will never be good enough to beat their rivals, so it’s time to give up on them and go shopping for replacements. What a thing to say in an educational context. The coaches aren’t teachers, they’re ex-players (a Google search told me that). An educator who declares that a child in his care cannot be developed any further and so he is abandoning him, should surely be dismissed, on the spot.

It gets worse. Not only is this lot not good enough, the speaker believes, but we cannot trust the future generation of players at the school, and the system in place, to ever produce a winning team again. So, it’s time to introduce a proper rugby programme at the school, starting from Under-14. And what he means by that is that they need to bring in 10 to 15 players per year, on bursaries from now on. And it should start now – there’s a professional scout, he says, who has identified five Grade 11 players who can be brought on board straight away, to salvage the rest of the season and build for next year.

He has had contact with old boys who are willing to help with that, and he will co-ordinate it.

Then he invokes the “Lance Armstrong” rationalisation – our rival schools are doing it, so we have to do it too. And to hell with the ethics and educational values!

As my friend who sent me the clip says: “The plot has genuinely been lost. How awful to play a sport under these conditions.”