Are the children still swimming up the waterfall? A look at literacy development in the new curriculum

Abstract

In 1990 the Threshold report (1990) laid bare the inadequacies of an education system that failed to support the linguistic and conceptual challenges that black primary school children faced when they made the transition from their primary language to English as a the language of learning and teaching. Now, ten years later, the same author considers the lot of black primary school children to see whether the linguistic and conceptual challenges facing these children are being met under the new educational dispensation. The author argues that weaknesses in the new curriculum, at both a theoretical and a practical level, have led to the neglect of basic literacy and numeracy development in the Foundation and Intermediate Phases.