During our stay and discussion in Washington, education has been one of the hot topics on the table. In almost all of our session the discussion would come back to education and the primary question resting on all of our minds is how can we reform the education system. One thing I’ve come to realize is that education reform cannot and will not happen solely through changing government policies or teacher salaries alone. What has happened to the state of education in South-Africa is so severe that it is ingrained into the mindset of both teachers and learners. Teachers can easily be persuaded to re-think education, but the learners is where the greatest challenge lies.

In reforming education, one has to tackle the issue in multiple arenas simultaneously. What I propose is looking at all the facets influencing learning, not just formal schooling, and start there. Policies do need to be changed, and teachers need to be granted greater recognition, but all of this will sink if the learner’s mind set isn’t changed as well. In this arena there are plenty of opportunities; social media and internet based learning is one of the empty arenas. In one of our recent sessions with a few of the top entrepreneurs in Washington we spoke on the opportunities in internet based learning systems such as Khan Academy and ePals. These platforms create integrated learning for teachers and learners, and it’s reforming the way teachers and learners are thinking about education. I believe this is something that has been overlooked in South-Africa. Many e-learning systems try to come through already established platforms through social media such as mxit or facebook. This didn’t work and won’t ever work, because these platforms already have an identity and trying to bring something to those platforms that does not resonate with its identity is futile. So people write off internet learning systems because it doesn’t seem to work. However, what we don’t seem to realize is that new platforms need to be crated and distributed with a pre-determined identity focused on integrated learning. In this way e-based learning systems won’t spiral out of control and out of its identity and purpose like so many e-based learning systems have. There are obvious challenges to this such as internet access and infrastructure, but if we can realize the potential of e-based learning and prioritize reforming education, we should do whatever it takes to get it right.