It’s time private schools listened to parents who dare to challenge their conservatism

6 Sep 2022

After being stonewalled by a school on its rigid sport and chapel rules, this parent says: My child, my parenting. My spirituality, my business. My money, my right to have a say.

I am a professor who is passionate about education, a deep thinker who is fascinated by the fraught relationship between personal spirituality and organised religion, and a mother who happily solo-parents.

When I chose my child’s school, I knew it was associated with the Methodist church. Having spent much of my life distancing myself from fundamentalist, patriarchal versions of Christianity, the fact that the school website said pupils of “all creeds” were accepted was encouraging. But I was not prepared for the remarks associated with the chapel that were posted on the school’s Facebook page a few years later.

It was Father’s Day 2020. Parents were teaching at home because of the pandemic, and I was struggling to fulfil the role of mother-father-teacher-professor during lockdown. The school’s Facebook post announced that the presence of a father could contribute to a child’s intellectual development and school achievement. Okay, I thought, perhaps it could. But so could the presence of a grandmother or auntie.

The post continued: Boys who don’t grow up with fathers are more likely to be emotionally disturbed, depressed, hypermasculine and aggressive. Strange, I thought. I have seen friends’ fathers or husbands adding to emotional disturbance and household aggression. But there was more. Girls without fathers are prone to low self-esteem, to engage in risky sexual behaviour, to have a baby outside of marriage or to get divorced.

What was the school telling our girls? That they need to be affirmed by a male to have healthy self-esteem? That those whose parents are divorced are lacking?

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In my fury, I complained to the school, and received an apology. The kind of apology that goes: “We are so sorry, but what we really meant was…”

No. There is no room for “but” here. While these statements were purportedly based on an academic study, they were not properly cited, taken out of context, and used inappropriately on the school’s Facebook page.

On heightened alert, I kept a close eye on the school’s social media. It was a few days after 16 June. The chapel’s approach to commemorating Youth Day was to ask learners to read Bible verses about Jesus loving children. It was 44 years after South African schoolchildren had been killed by apartheid police, and 22 days after George Floyd had been murdered because of the colour of his skin.

Many across the world were enraged. At this time, all churches and all schools in South Africa should have been enraged too! Even in a junior school there are age-appropriate ways to teach children about social injustice, and equipping them to grow up to be agents of change.

Around the same time, my child received a worksheet about the Statue of Liberty. “Have you had a class conversation about liberty?” I asked.

“No,” my child replied.

I grumbled to myself about this lack of meaningful discussion, and later heard my child announce to the online class: “My mom is mad! She’s mad because of Donald Trump, and because there is no liberty in America!”

“You go, kiddo!” I thought to myself.

Silence. No class discussion on liberty or the lack thereof.

Missed opportunities

My child then received a worksheet with the multiple-choice question: “Who discovered Victoria Falls?” The answers given were, in effect: a) A white British man; b) A white British man; or c) A white British man.

I told my child that none of those answers was correct, and I showed him a photograph of the chief who lives by the falls (known as Mosi-oa-Tunya in Zambia), and whose ancestors knew about the falls long before David Livingstone appeared.

These experiences confirmed just how much unlearning needs to take place. Having been vocal about the need for transformation for years, I decided to go to the heart of the school’s conservatism – the council. I began with chapel attendance.

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In October 2020, I wrote to the school council explaining that the particular worldview associated with chapel needs to be transformed.

Because this worldview clashed spiritually and pedagogically with the way I was choosing to raise my child, our family decision was to not view chapel attendance as compulsory.

It is almost two years later. Despite sending the council three reminders, the only information I have received is that a subcommittee was being formed to “evaluate” my request. On what planet does a mother need a subcommittee she has never met to decide for her whether attending a particular chapel service is good for her child or not?

I had already heard the retort, “Well, you chose to send your child to a Christian school”, but from a spiritual and constitutional point of view, that argument is flawed.

Yes, I chose the school. However, I did not choose the conservative, heteronormative and patriarchal worldview associated with chapel. I, we, have a right to express our personal beliefs; to say, “Not this version of Christianity.”

Wondering how the school might view the situation from a legal perspective, I approached a lawyer. I gathered all the paperwork I’d received from the school (including the contract I signed); I combed through the school website; I read all the existing policies, and I phoned the school to ask if there were any policies that existed that were not posted on the website. No chapel policy exists.

My lawyer informed me that no documentation stated that chapel attendance is compulsory. It was only when my child entered a more senior grade that the weekly schedule mentioned that certain Sunday chapel services were mandatory. I refuse to sacrifice weekend family time for school chapel, and the weekday chapel services have never explicitly been labelled compulsory.

So why does silently enforced, non-transparent coercion work? Of course, all parents fear that their children will bear the brunt if they rattle the cage.

After sending the letter, I gave my child the option of sitting in the administrator’s office during chapel, but he was told this was not allowed. I was not willing to push him into the line of fire, so I waited for the adults in the situation to respond.

I have shared my view that the council remains untransformed, but am informed that my suspicion is incorrect. My impression is that the council is largely swayed by school alumni, particularly multiple-generational alumni. We know what that means – mostly male, mostly white and a nostalgia for tradition and the “good old days”.

The old apartheid days?

This would explain the school’s unyielding stance on rugby and cricket. I was informed repeatedly that an exemption could only be granted if I produced a doctor’s note saying that my child was not able to play rugby.

I told the school that I do not accept that the staple sports of the apartheid era (rugby and cricket) are compulsory, and that other sports can’t replace those “sacred sports”.

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It was only after I pointed out accounts of negligence with regard to my child’s sports team that my child was allowed to stop those sports. But it happened silently. I never received a statement, either verbally or in writing, that this exemption was granted.

Writing, of course, holds weight. Silence, on the other hand, is very convenient. It is the bedrock of untransformed institutional cultures. And it appears to be the modus operandi of many private schools, especially school councils.

Perhaps the council’s refusal to reply to my letter, or engage with me on any level, reflects a fear that other parents might also request chapel or rugby exemptions. But what if a significant number of parents were to follow suit? What if parents had a say?

I do not want my child to be the exception, for this inevitably breeds prejudice.

It should be unexceptional for families to have a say about sport, and to freely express their spiritual beliefs – including the right to withhold explanation – even in faith-based schools that largely fail to connect with contemporary South African society.

There is no going back to the “old days”. Private schools can’t demand hefty fees, while refusing to listen to parents who dare to call for change. In what other business (for, ultimately, they run as businesses) do clients have no say?

In response to the council’s stonewalling, this mother says: No! My child, my parenting. My spirituality, my business. My money, my right to have a say. Our South Africa. Our urgent need for change. DM168

Professor Ruth Simbao, National Research Foundation Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa

This Article was first published in 168 on August 13, 2022. As we were going to print, the school council responded to the author's request communicated in 2020. The Council Chair invited the author to a meeting with the Reverend to discuss her concerns but stated that Council still stipulates that chapel attendance is compulsory.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.

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Missed opportunities

The old apartheid days?