Elaine Browne.pdf - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

curriculum and chose the easiest activity. Most of the time they, “only do the important things”.
Some teachers subsequently made peace with the fact that they would not adhere to all the
requirements. One teacher felt that the Department of Education is expecting too much, “They
... everything they want to develop into a composite at the end, and it don’t work in every case.
And most of the time you go to training, they tell you, you got to create a composite at the end.
Those four disciplines go together and create a play or do something. And there’s no time for
that, there’s no space. It should be taught in isolation and they are not teaching it in isolation”.
Another teacher complained about the curriculum’s strong emphasis on integration. He felt
that learning areas overlap and time was wasted when aspects that learners have already done
in Life Orientation or Technology had to be repeated in arts. In this regard, the respondents
were of the opinion that too much time was spent on “finding links with other learning areas”.
Learners became bored as they were “hearing the same things over and over”. One teacher
concluded, “I say you are so ... jy’s geboei. Jy is rêrig geboei en gebind 7 with all the other things
they keep on repeating in Life Orientation”.
Sub‐theme 1.3: Vague curriculum
According to teachers, the curriculum is vague. One teacher complained that the “learning
outcomes in Arts and Culture ... it’s mixed. You know, when you do one exercise, it is a mixture
of LOs that you are doing. You know, it’s not clear and precise telling you exactly what to do like
with English and Life Orientation, those other learning areas”. A number of teachers felt that
7 You are tied.
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