Overcoming The Wundt Curve and Solving our Education Problems

Mfundo Radebe
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

When the #GuptaLeaks came about, revealing the evidence of a state that had been captured, many South Africans were absolutely mortified. The sheer corruption was far too much to bare. Though, it’s not as if these allegations were new, however, for the first time most of what had been alleged was now confirmed. As each day passed, a new email heap was exposed, revealing an extension of the Gupta-State network. You would expect that this would have directly correlated with an intensified eagerness to act from our country. That wasn’t the case. The more we found out, the more desensitized we became.

Many people understand this basic principle of life. The more you expose people to something, the more they seem to care less. Many, for example, pointed to the ‘hypocrisy’ of the world’s #PrayforParis when the city of Paris, France, underwent a terrorist attack. People pointed to the fact that Africa is in a constant state of instability, and yet nobody calls for intervention then.

Tibor Scitovsky was a Hungarian-born, American economist whose writings on the human intersections of consumption and happiness, which have really trickled into the realms of psychology, described this phenomenon. He described this human tendency through what is known as the Wundt Curve. The Wundt Curve describes how the more novel an idea or concept is to us, the more pleasurable or interested we get. However, it is regressive at a certain point. When we find out too much about something, we end up caring less and less about it. It becomes unbearable to us.

So what exactly does this mean? From my perspective as a South African, I believe this accounts for why we allow politicians to get away with so much. This especially in terms of explaining poor performance in service delivery. The more we hear of new corruption, for example, the more we just want to close our newspaper. The more we hear that the ‘E Cape fails to deliver textbooks to 42% of pupils’ (African News Agency), the more likely we want to move on to finding out about how the Springboks performed, and less so about who was responsible for this.

Politicians know about this, and they ride this wave (think for example where the term ‘ride it out’ comes from). I am going to go the exact opposite way, however. I believe that a consistent marker of our progress and failure as a country is what allows us to build effective measures of accountability. Often in our country, the government can get away with having delivered only ’42% of textbooks’ at a specific deadline. We’ve seen this in several areas in education. On January 7, 2017, The Economist (one of the world’s premier publications on global politics and economics) published an article titled “South Africa has one of the world’s worst education systems”. The article was scathing, showing a country with teachers who had lost hope in a system meant to help their learners.

The opening paragraph stated: ‘“AFTER half an hour of pencil-chewing Lizeka Rantsan’s class lines up at her desk to hand in its maths tests. The teacher at Oranjekloof primary school in Cape Town thanks the 11- and 12-year-olds and flicks through the papers. Ms Rantsan sighs, unimpressed. Pulling one sheet of errant scribbles from the pile she asks: “How are we supposed to help these children?”’

It is not the hopelessness that we need to look for, however, in showing the apathetic account through which we approach both politics and education, it is in the misrepresentation of facts. Nic Spaull is one of the country’s leading researchers in education. He writes quite often about the failures of our education system, and a need to change our satisfied view of South African education. In 2015, after the 2014 matric results were released, he wrote: “The notion of the matric pass rate is one that is deeply rooted in the South African psyche and seen as perhaps the most important indicator of education in the country. This is extremely short sighted.” Spaull went on to a deeper analysis on why many children drop out, failing to even reach matric.

In my previous article, I told you that over 60% of South African children are still in vulnerable conditions today. That should shock us. It is okay for it to shock us because it prompts us to act. When these instances shock us, we can be assured that we still view each and every one of our children as a hopeful story to be told, and not another statistic.

The novelty of instances when we learn of our shortcomings should make us want to get involved as South Africans. We should seek to hold ourselves and our government accountable.

By Mfundo Radebe

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Mfundo Radebe

Written by

Mfundo is a debater, public speaker, and Harvard Student. He is a youth and education activist and is the founder of Dlulisa.

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