All posts by Gerald Charles Accom

About Gerald Charles Accom

I have been involved in teaching/education related activities for the past 47 years and have been exposed to Teaching and Learning from Grade R to12 as well at tertiary level. I have also been actively involved in local affairs, affording me the opportunity to serve a wide range of sport- and community- based organisations. I was a member of the LGNF (Local Government Negotiation Forum) just before the dawn of the new South Africa and served as a local government councillor from 1985 to 2000. I then became a member of the Executive Council of the Makana Municipality in 2000. I served as chairperson of the Local Economic Development Committee until 2005. After I took a break from local politics I enrolled as a part-time student at our local university. (Rhodes) I have successfully completed an ACE in Technology Education, a B.Ed (Hons) degree in ICT and Technology education and a M.Ed in Science Education. My main interest is developing e-lessons for teachers. I am really passionate about the potential of ICT in education and would dearly appreciate any assistance and guidance in this regard. I have been a part-time lecturer for ACE students in Technology Education, Life – Orientation and ICT Education as well a part-time lecturer for the B Ed ICT and B.Ed Science groups in the Rhodes Education Department. I was teaching in-service teachers during school holidays and this made me acutely aware of the challenges faced by teachers in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape. I had the rare opportunity to work in towns and villages like Dwesa, Dutywa, Butterworth, Willowvale, Elliotdale, Port St Johns, Mthata etc. and this was a real eye-opener. I was offered a temporary teaching post at a local Catholic Primary School in 2018 . This experience at a primary school groomed me for the offer to assist in the B.Ed Foundation Phase Course at Rhodes in 2019. I was given a few sessions per week. In 2020 I was given more classes and one could say that from 2020 to 2022 I was very fortunate in being afforded the opportunity to interact with young students across the course from year one to year four as well as in-service teachers in the Foundation Phase. The reason why I count myself fortunate is that for the first time in my teaching career since 1976, I became immersed in the curriculum and teaching of learners from Grade R to Grade 3. I really enjoyed this new experience which ended in November 2022. At the moment I am trying to assist the staff at the Sun City Nursery school that is situated in an informal settlement in the township and my latest experience has proven to be of great assistance. These days I have more time on my hands and it afforded me the opportunity to co-found the organization called MCCC (Makana Civic Community Coalition) and to fool around with my website: TECHNOLOGERRY What originally was initiated to assist Senior Phase Technology Learning Area teachers in South Africa has now become quite a Rainbow site serving all sorts of food for thought in Education.

BLOG: Is it Fact, Fiction or Opinion??

Gerald Accom

 MY OPINION

BLOG: Is it Fact, Fiction or Opinion?

Edit

 

CURRENT TOPIC/THEME:“ WHY ARE SO MANY THINGS GOING WRONG IN THE WORLD?”

Hopefully we would be able to interrogate difficult issues facing us and use the comments from followers to do some introspection.

Let me start this conversation by saying the following:

Teaching became my calling, but unfortunately not much one learns in any training institution can adequately prepare one for teaching in a South African township school. There were days when I felt like giving up, but somehow I managed to soldier on and pray that somewhere down the line we will reach a space where I will be able to do what I have trained for. To teach…to just be who and what I had anticipated being.

 

 

Is a world without problems possible at all? Perhaps one could respond by saying, “Yes if all the people are removed it would be an amazing planet”. But how likely is such a scenario? Maybe it’s just an asteroid away, who knows. Should that happen though, chances are that life in all probability will evolve from some simple form and history will repeat itself. Maybe…

Right now however, we are in more ways than one confined to planet earth and its population is growing in leaps and bounds.

The other very real aspect of our existence is that humans are mostly responsible for the things that are problematic on earth. I am not disputing the fact that massive strides in respect of technology and general improvement in our ability to manipulate our environment to suit our needs and wants have been made, but people are human. We have been more or less human for thousands of years and in being human we co-inhabit living space as human beings. It is this concept of being human that garners challenges in respect of living together in harmony. For any group of individuals, no matter how diverse or unique, living together in harmony poses a challenge and the size of this challenge is directly proportional to the size of the group. One could safely argue that the nature and number of problems increases with an increase in the size of a group. This becomes more apparent when one takes into account that this increase in number happens in a limited space with limited resources.

 

 

I am sharing my opinion in the hope of attracting comments or opinions from people who have given this notion some thought.

Gerry

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “BLOG: Is it Fact, Fiction or Opinion?”

  1. Hi Gerry… here under follows my penny’s worth of my knee jerk reaction to your invitation and suggestion – (I have not thought it out deeply yet, on how I should refine and present it, but here is my spontaneous reaction):
    In this world of a lot of changes and uncertainty, if there is one thing that will never change, it is the fact that a lot of things must and will always change… From a communication perspective, the difference is that the bad effect of this constant change, is lately more effectively and much widely communicated around the world.

    In eras gone by,, nations also used to fight and the many lives then too, were viciously and mercilessly lost. But only people in that locality got to know about the full extent and the wide effect of those in those regions only.

    Those wars adversely effected those local economies only, they affected more those social formations of those regions, and effectively influenced the local political ideologies of those regions.

    Today the world is just ONE single big (“bad”) unit, whose communication spreads across continents, and it does so much more effectively with the aid of advanced communication technology,, and more effectively and with more impact, because of the aid of more effective sounds and more moving visual to go with the account of events or their communication thereof

    Example: An incident during the current Ukraine- Russia war where Russia bombed a clearly marked hideout where women and children were sheltered, cause an international and world-wide reaction/condemnation and or outcry. This localized war is even affecting current diplomatic relations of bigger global superpowers (China and America).

    Even the not-so-near African continent is adversely affected by this war. Some African presidents even travelled to that region in a bid to broker peace (let alone that we -far away back at home – even got to know that that our Presidents entourage ended up not reaching their destination, stranded in a plane for hours without fresh sanitation facilities (short of nearly knowing even what soap they used when they eventually got to shower or bath hours lalter!!

    The world, therefore, Gerry is “doing it’s usual thing” in changing. Whether it is good change or bad changes (the latter is usually more frequently and much widely publicized).

    If you seat Infront of TV set for a 20 minutes watching a news bulletin one evening, or reading a Mail & Guardian opinion piece in bed, you would swear and feel that the works is going to end the following morning. The effect of account of doom and gloom you would have been blasted with that evening, detailing only more prominently and visually the more alarming and devastating account of what is happening around the whole world because seeking more sensationalisatiom hidden behind the justication if it being more “newsworthy”.

    Every full news bulletin – if watched in it’s entirety – tend to demotivate and to alarm the viewer that this world “is one big, bad world!!!”

    I rest my case, if the reading “quorum” of MCCC pleases!!!

    Doc