> The conventional wisdom on class sizes is being challenged currently.
This is a statement without any meaning. Yeah, large class sizes with 800 students is OK in college.
But it is a huge as difference between primary schools and secondary schools where children need more individual attention. How will a teacher check that each child writes properly, or get a chance to speak? I’ve been learning a foreign language recently and I found a class of 14 people too big. Imagine being a poor black kid in a class of 80 trying to learn English or another language?
You know that some rural schools have a ratio of 1 to 80? These are the kids that need more attention than any other student. Yet they do not get it.
You are right that in some sectors of education the idea of class sizes are irrelevant – notably college kids or self-motivated students (a very small percentage). This is not what you will find in your typical overfull and run down rural school.
> The reason why blacks, Indians and Coloureds have historically lived so far from their workplaces is that the apartheid government (literally) forced them out of urban centres and onto the periphery of urban areas.
The reason why most black people historically lived far from business centres was because they were spread around the country (This was the same for white Afrikaans people in the beginning of the century).
At least in Gauteng, business centers arose around mining sites and are unnaturally densely packed around this. By the way, look at groups such as Venda’s, N. Sothos, etc… They were historically far from business centers, not because they were moved there by the Apartheid government, but because there was not big industrial development in the area that they historically lived (such as a town which grew from mining roots).
> Transport infrastructure was neglected for 20 years, starting in the 1980's, and continuing under Mandela and much of Mbeki's tenure.
Again, this is debatable. Quality of roads in rural areas rapidly declined in the last 15 years. This is mostly due to the fact that the provincial governments and local governments lost almost all capacity to function (again, this is truer for rural areas).
> Car-centric urban sprawl also first took hold under the apartheid government (even today, mass transit between the black areas of Soweto and white-flight Sandton, established in the late 70's is nonexistent).
South Africa will always be a car based country as far as passengers go. We simply do not have the high densities needed to form passenger rail networks.
It is however interesting to note that freight rail has almost completely declined in South Africa with most freight transport occurring with trucks (increasing danger). The South African rail company (Transnet) is also a corrupt ANC cadre cesspool.
> why was did that government have to run up massive deficits to support the system?
The Apartheid government did not have to run up massive deficits to support that system. The deficits were created by defence spending (which was in the 80ies around 10% of GDP) and things such as sanctions.
> Communist countries also enjoyed low unemployment, just as Apartheid South Africa did, thanks to similarly massive misallocations of resources, and coercion, in pursuit of a failed ideology.
Yet, in 1994 SA’s economy was 50% the size of the whole sub-Sahara Africa’s economy. Whilst many of those countries followed a Marxist ideology, SA still remains the only industrialised country on the continent.
> The only place where pro-apartheid revisionism gets much currency is in obscure corners of the internet.
Look. Your argument is now “something is bad because someone said so”. I said at the beginning of this post that I do not see Apartheid as good, but I do not see the new government as good (Majority democracy failed horribly in South Africa). Or do you describe a government that presides over a 15 year drop in life expectancy as “good”?
I also do not care about moralizing. As an example, Singapore was ruled by a dictator and the PAP political party ever since it existed. They are generally condemned by people who take the (western) moral outlook and whatnot. Yet it is one of the most developed countries in the world with a higher standard of living than any of its more politically correct neighbours. When cold and hard statistics and facts are used, Singapore is one of the best governed countries in the world – and much better developed than its neighbours.
Regarding class sizes, I refer you to the recent news about Gates Foundation findings regarding class size, versus teacher quality. Large numbers of poor/mediocre teachers and small class sizes are not necessarily better than good teachers with larger class sizes.
South Africa's densities are low because of apartheid planning. Segregation trumped density or sustaintability.
Freight rail has indeed declined in South Africa, partly because of corruption, but the neglect started many years before. South Africa's railway rolling stock is, on average, decades old, so the lack of investment in rail, and promotion of road transport, started long before the present government took over.
The lower life expectancy is due to HIV/Aids and it is similar to neigbouring countries. In the (highly unlikely) event that the Apartheid government had survived, I doubt that the life expectancy figures would have been much better. (And the AIDS epidemic took hold under the apartheid government).The infant mortality rate remains better than the world average.
The Apartheid regime was not viewed as a benevolent dictatorship by the majority of South Africans (or the rest of the world), so comparisons to Singapore are spurious. Instead, Apartheid was an organised state policy to further the interests of white people, at the expense of all others, monopolising the wealth and resources of the country, while throwing enough crumbs at a deliberately dumbed-down black population, to keep them docile.
> Large numbers of poor/mediocre teachers and small class sizes are not necessarily better than good teachers with larger class sizes.
I suspect that this probably referred to class sizes of 15 (small) and 30 (large). In South Africa, a small class is 35 and a large class is 80. It is quite a difference.
How do you think a teacher would keep rudimentary discipline in such a big class? You cannot even check their homework.
Learning a new language, it is important to talk it. In a class size of 80 people, each person would get 45 seconds to talk or answer a question in a double period (assuming that there was no lesson or any interruption otherwise). Learning a language would be impossible for these people.
> South Africa's densities are low because of apartheid planning. Segregation trumped density or sustaintability.
South Africa’s densities are low because South Africa only industrialized fairly recently and we have a natural low density (40 people per square kilometre).
> The lower life expectancy is due to HIV/Aids and it is similar to neighbouring countries.
I think that you set the bar artificially low when you compare with neighbouring countries (Civilwartorn Mozambique, Mugabe Zimbabwe and the Kleptocracies of Lesotho and Swaziland).
> In the (highly unlikely) event that the Apartheid government had survived, I doubt that the life expectancy figures would have been much better. (And the AIDS epidemic took hold under the apartheid government).
The NP government of De Klerk had a surprisingly good AIDS program (seeing as the disease was then a smaller problem).
You seem to gloss over Mbeki’s AIDS denial (he did not want to give pregnant mothers even Nverapine which would have prevented mother to child transmission of AIDS during birth). The courts had to be used to force the government to change.
Even Harvard University had a study which they claimed that Mbeki’s government at least caused 300,000 deaths. That is genocide. The world would have been up in arms if the Apartheid government had a similar policy.
> The Apartheid regime was not viewed as a benevolent dictatorship by the majority of South Africans (or the rest of the world),
So? Neither Singapore (or for that matter, Pinochet’s Chile) is/was viewed as benevolent dictatorships. All things considered, statistically the country was governed better than neighbouring countries.
> Instead, Apartheid was an organised state policy to further the interests of white people, at the expense of all others,
It is ironic that it is middle class white people whose income grew* the most in post-Apartheid South Africa (see again the Knight & XX study I mentioned) while unemployment and real salaries fell for black people.
So, if you complain about the enrichment of white people, the current government is doing a much better job of it. Income inequality increased significantly the past 15 years.
> deliberately dumbed-down black population, to keep them docile.
This is also debatable. The biggest expansion of tertiary education on the African continent (for both black and white people) occurred during the 70ies and 80ies. Even the TIMSS study (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) scores were higher in 1994/1995 than in the newer study. There are numerous international benchmarks which showed that the quality of education declined.
This is a statement without any meaning. Yeah, large class sizes with 800 students is OK in college.
But it is a huge as difference between primary schools and secondary schools where children need more individual attention. How will a teacher check that each child writes properly, or get a chance to speak? I’ve been learning a foreign language recently and I found a class of 14 people too big. Imagine being a poor black kid in a class of 80 trying to learn English or another language?
You know that some rural schools have a ratio of 1 to 80? These are the kids that need more attention than any other student. Yet they do not get it.
You are right that in some sectors of education the idea of class sizes are irrelevant – notably college kids or self-motivated students (a very small percentage). This is not what you will find in your typical overfull and run down rural school.
> The reason why blacks, Indians and Coloureds have historically lived so far from their workplaces is that the apartheid government (literally) forced them out of urban centres and onto the periphery of urban areas.
The reason why most black people historically lived far from business centres was because they were spread around the country (This was the same for white Afrikaans people in the beginning of the century).
At least in Gauteng, business centers arose around mining sites and are unnaturally densely packed around this. By the way, look at groups such as Venda’s, N. Sothos, etc… They were historically far from business centers, not because they were moved there by the Apartheid government, but because there was not big industrial development in the area that they historically lived (such as a town which grew from mining roots).
> Transport infrastructure was neglected for 20 years, starting in the 1980's, and continuing under Mandela and much of Mbeki's tenure.
Again, this is debatable. Quality of roads in rural areas rapidly declined in the last 15 years. This is mostly due to the fact that the provincial governments and local governments lost almost all capacity to function (again, this is truer for rural areas).
> Car-centric urban sprawl also first took hold under the apartheid government (even today, mass transit between the black areas of Soweto and white-flight Sandton, established in the late 70's is nonexistent).
South Africa will always be a car based country as far as passengers go. We simply do not have the high densities needed to form passenger rail networks.
It is however interesting to note that freight rail has almost completely declined in South Africa with most freight transport occurring with trucks (increasing danger). The South African rail company (Transnet) is also a corrupt ANC cadre cesspool.
> why was did that government have to run up massive deficits to support the system?
The Apartheid government did not have to run up massive deficits to support that system. The deficits were created by defence spending (which was in the 80ies around 10% of GDP) and things such as sanctions.
> Communist countries also enjoyed low unemployment, just as Apartheid South Africa did, thanks to similarly massive misallocations of resources, and coercion, in pursuit of a failed ideology.
Yet, in 1994 SA’s economy was 50% the size of the whole sub-Sahara Africa’s economy. Whilst many of those countries followed a Marxist ideology, SA still remains the only industrialised country on the continent.
> The only place where pro-apartheid revisionism gets much currency is in obscure corners of the internet.
Look. Your argument is now “something is bad because someone said so”. I said at the beginning of this post that I do not see Apartheid as good, but I do not see the new government as good (Majority democracy failed horribly in South Africa). Or do you describe a government that presides over a 15 year drop in life expectancy as “good”?
I also do not care about moralizing. As an example, Singapore was ruled by a dictator and the PAP political party ever since it existed. They are generally condemned by people who take the (western) moral outlook and whatnot. Yet it is one of the most developed countries in the world with a higher standard of living than any of its more politically correct neighbours. When cold and hard statistics and facts are used, Singapore is one of the best governed countries in the world – and much better developed than its neighbours.