17/01/2022
FOOD FOR THOUGHT!
WE ARE NOT TRYING TO DEFY CONVENTION, WE ARE SIMPLY EXECUTING AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME!
BREAKING NEWS! OTHERS HAVE ALREADY STARTED.
Meet these three young people from neighbouring SA! They all have three things in common.
They are:
1. Young native South Africans
2. Qualified and active medical practitoners
3. Skipped grades to start university in their mid-teens and completed by age 21!
Below are their brief stories:
(1) DR SANDILE KUBHEKA – KZN, GRADUATED 2014
Three months into his Grade 6 at the Jobstown Primary School in Masondeza, Madadeni, he was promoted (NB: PROMOTED) to Grade 7.
He was 15 when he matriculated from Siyamukela High School,
He started studying towards a degree in Medicine and Surgery (MBChB) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at 16, and graduated in 2014 AGED TWENTY (20)! He has been a successful medical doctor for seven years now!
(2) DR THAKGALO THIBELA
At graduation, Dr Thakgalo Thibela was the youngest active female doctor in South Africa.
At 6 Thakgalo started primary school at Farel Primary School. She was the top student from grade 1 to grade 6. She never got to do grade 7 - the school made her skip that grade and promoted her straight to high school.
At Lehlasedi High School she was promoted to grade 10 because of her outstanding academic performance.
Off she went to attend Wits University at the age of 16 enrolling for a six year degree in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery(MBBCH) and graduated at 21 on December 17, 2020!
Her academic excellence earned her the Golden Key International membership, a recognition for students who are doing well academically and excelling in Universities all over the world.
(3) DR DECENT MKHOMBO
He was promoted from grade 4 to grade 5 at Thulamahashe Lower Primary School, and later from grade 8 to grade 9 at Orhovelani High School, where he matriculated in 2015.
Come December 21, 2021, the 21-year-old from Thulamahashe, Mpumalanga was among 47 young medical doctors who took their oath at the university after completing their degree in medicine.
NOW LET'S REFLECT A BIT
Were these young people smart? Yes they were ALL very hard workers! Was it easy? Not at all, they had to bust their backsides, through it all - slogging, taking extra lessons and tuition out of school.
Can all young people be like them? We don’t know until we make an effort to find out. This is what we now know: some will be and finish A BIT EARLIER, some will finish AT THE PRESCRIBED TIME, and some will only get it done OVER A LONGER PERIOD THAN PRESCRIBED. That’s natural. Our children are different and we have to treat them accordingly.
What’s not natural is to assume our children are standardised 'things' and treat them all the same. Imagine the evil of keeping a child scooped in a grade or standard level that they have long passed – or forcing them to achieve in seven years what they can in 5, 6, 8 or 10? It’s akin to witchcraft!
All the South African schools we read about, above promoted their children – read that again: "PROMOTION!" What an apt term for this phenomenon.
Let’s promote our children – almost ALL of them are way smarter than us! I read every day and I consider myself smart, but in the past 10 years I haven’t met a single student who is less smart than me! So what makes us think our child is NOT smart enough to be promoted to the next level WHEN they should? The belief that they are like us.
NEWSFLASH! They are not and stop kidding yourself. We have been giving birth to geniuses for a while now and the digital age keeps catapulting them to stratosphere!
Let’s get out of our children’s way. They need promotion and not restriction or, for that matter, pressure. And promotion is only possible by making them try new things – set the bar a bit higher than before, see who jumps how far and then determine their fate from their own attempts and not according to our sterile or obsolete beliefs!
Article by Saidi Mdala, GameChangers Media
