Previously Disadvantaged School may become a Role-Model for Humane Education 

Does Humane Education promote better behaviour among learners? Does it create a foundation for moral integrity and community upliftment?

School Principal, Mr Wilfred Scholtz is putting this to the test in his school, in a two-year-long pilot project in partnership with the Humane Education Trust.

The go-ahead for this project has received the stamp of approval from Granville Whittle, the National Department of Education’s Chief Education Specialist for Race and Values in Education. Already underway, it involves 1300 learners at Forest Heights Primary School near Cape Town, 1000 parents, 35 teachers, 10 Bambanani (community policing) officers and four members of the South African Police, in whose precinct the school falls.  The specific aim of the project is to test humane education as a tool in the resolution of conflict – in the classroom, on the playground, and in the homes and broader community of the learners involved.

The project will be assessed by the DoE’s own psychologists and sociologists.

Dr Kai Horsthemke, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Education, is also taking an interest in the project, as is Sharyn Spicer, a doctoral student at the University of the Western Cape, focusing on the link between animal abuse and human abuse.

Dr Horsthemke, a specialist in animal ethics, pointed out that without denying the importance of care, compassion and kindness to animals, the pilot project’s primary focus was on the moral integrity of the learners themselves. "In this sense, the project may well break new ground,” he said.