Thursday's children

On the last day of the first month of the new year, we will be inundated by the grade ten and eleven students from Lückhoff High in Ida's Valley, a suburb of nearby Stellenbosch.

''Especially the grade tens in the subject physical science need a firsthand approach to the subject - to feel something, see something, experience a process - so it becomes real to them,'' said Mrs Cheryl King, the life sciences teacher at Lückhoff.

The 60 or so students will be accompanied by physical science teacher Mrs Georgina Apples, and it's hoped that the visit to the MTN Sciencentre will spark their curiosity about the astonishing world we live in.

''At the moment we do moderately, we're not where we want them to be,'' said Mrs King. ''They have the ability to do much better - especially in science subjects. A lack of good facilities is an issue. We have qualified teachers. The surroundings play quite a great role in their lack of interest. They're not stimulated maybe enough at home.''

Lückhoff was the first Afrikaans-language high school for so-called coloured people in the Boland, said Stellenbosch University rector Russell Botman. In fact, the desire for education was so strong that Lückhoff was the third school to be built in the entire Boland region.

Pupils came to the school from as far away as neighbouring countries such as what was then South-West Africa (now Namibia). Children from remote regions lived with local families, guided by the motto “Education is Light”.

The school was deliberately shut down in 1964 by the education department of the National Party in terms of the Group Areas Act, which threw out the so-called bruin mense in favour of the white minority.

Barely three months before writing their finals, the 1964 matric students were unceremoniously evicted from the building and forcefully relocated — along with students from various church schools — to a cramped, barracks-like building in the ''coloureds-only'' township of Ida’s Valley, where the school remains today.

Ida's Valley was founded in 1920 on the northeast side of Stellenbosch, when many of the first residents farmed vegetables and fruit such as strawberries. Today it is a low-income to working-class suburb of the university town, and you can find many of its residents singing their hearts out in the famous Libertas choir.

According to an article by Hazel Friedman in The Teacher, for more than 25 years educator and activist Pat William, the current headmaster of Lückhoff, has watched with despair how the engine of post-apartheid change has moved in fits and starts.

Together with community stalwarts like Moegamat Kara and Isgak Pool, Williams has embarked on an epic project to rewrite the history of Stellenbosch and to document the trajectory of cultural dispossession experienced by the communities of Ida’s Valley and neighbouring Cloeteville. This, he hopes, will instil in his students a sense of pride in their heritage, helping to heal the wounds of a fractured history.

Let us hope that the visit to the MTN Sciencentre can form part of this process.