Don't Believe Everything You Hear

Have you ever wondered if your teacher or your boss was just making crap up as they went along? Have you had the moment where you think to yourself, hmmm no that doesn’t sound right, but then just let it go because an authority figure said it was true so therefore it has to be true?  After being a teacher for eight weeks with absolutely no teaching credentials, I think it is time we start teaching our kids to question basically anything a teacher says in this country. I have recently discovered that in South Africa information takes the back burner to personal opinion and mythology, which I often find entertaining but also worrisome. I have taken note of this week’s information blunders and hope you find them as enjoyable as I did.

Turns out South Africa has come up with its own answer to the age old question: is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? While some people argue the science and say it is a fruit, others argue the fact that they are gross so therefore it has to be a vegetable; South Africa takes a different approach. They just make up their own category. According to a poster that I recently found in the staff room (published in 2010) there are fruits, vegetables, and vegetable fruits. What is a vegetable fruit you ask; well no one could actually give me an answer to that. Maybe people just got tired of arguing about it here and decided to name it both so no matter what you call it you’re only half wrong. Here 50% is way above passing, so now kids can pick either answer and they will be close. Strangely enough avocados and green peppers were also thrown into the vegetable fruit category. I’m not really sure why green peppers would be classified different than red and yellow peppers, which were shown under the vegetable category, but I’m just going to go with it. So now if someone ever asks you if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable, you always have to option to tell them that in South Africa it is both.

Soon after my discovery of the vegetable fruit poster I began to sneeze due to the two years of dust sitting on top of said poster. After third sneeze the other teachers in the staff room became very concerned for my health. I had a minor cough all week and now I was sneezing, so clearly I was dying. Although I tried to explain that I just had allergies, the concern didn’t end there. Apparently, as I was informed by three very concerned women, there is no such thing as allergies. That’s right people, all those times the doctor told you that you are allergic to pollen, cats, or nuts, they were lying. It’s shocking right, all these years of taking antihistamines was a waste because I obviously have asthma, or maybe pneumonia, or possibly bronchitis, but definitely not allergies because those aren’t real. Luckily for me, it doesn’t really matter what I have because there is some traditional Zulu medicine to cure just about anything. While I stuck to my story of having allergies and not needing to see a doctor or a chemist (pharmacist), the older teachers decided that they knew better than my young naive mind, so today a was greeted with a little home brew to cure all. I know some people out there will swear by traditional medicines, but I am a firm believer in not drinking things if I don’t know what’s in it. I’m also a firm believer that you should never drink something that looks like sludge, and this stuff fell under the unknown and sludge category, so there was absolutely no way I was drinking that crap. Unfortunately it is rather hard to explain why you won’t drink something that looked like a Harry Potter potion gone really wrong to a group of people who truly believe it would cure me. So going with the theme of the week, I just started making shit up. Apparently I am now a firm believer that medicine should not be used unless you are extremely ill, and that Americans believe it is better to just let illnesses run their course so your body can learn to fight it. Turns out lying is a great way to get out of taking the scariest medicine I have ever seen.

This was about the time that I started thinking that maybe teachers aren’t as smart as students think they are. This thought was confirmed after school when I was walking home with a group of grade 8 learners who have decided that I am a walking encyclopedia. These kids don’t exactly have access to the internet so they can’t just Google thinks when they have questions, so obviously the next best option is ask the white girl. Today’s questions focused on pants and animals for their Natural Science class. The questions started off pretty normal about what types of plants can live underwater vs. plants that just need water to live. Then they took a turn for the weird when one of the girls asked what plants can fly. Turns out they were informed during class today that some plants can fly. I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that, so I told them I would ask their teacher about it tomorrow, but right now there are 42 grade 8 learners who now think that plants can fly. Maybe my next lie will be, “No mom, Butch didn’t trample over all your flowers because I threw the ball in the garden. The flowers simply flew away”.  A teacher told me it was possible, so obviously it’s true.

The progression of information this week concerns me. In the US we teach kids to at least use critical thinking, so hopefully by 8^th grade they would not buy into the flying plant information, but that’s not how things work in this country. Kids here are taught not ask questions, and to never talk back to an authority figure, so how are they ever supposed to figure out some things people say just aren’t true?