Ever wondered why you were bored at school? and why your child/relative is also showing no interest in school? Ever asked yourself why a certain learner is struggling academically? Have you figured out the root of behavioral problems of some learners? These questions have answers from a psychological, parental, and teachers point of views – psychologists would mention several reasons for learner’s boredom. Parents would argue many underlying factors for their children’s disinterest in school. Teachers would probably be judge-mental stating that learners are on social media or dating or even smoking and drinking instead of studying. All these three groups (psychologists, parents and teachers) would have something to say as they always have. We barely find the curriculum opinion on questions such as these. This paper seeks to reveal the real reasons for learners boredom and disinterest in school.

A learner who holds a remarkable passion about politics and has always dreamt of him/herself  in the political arena as a parliamentarian, minister, president or unionist etc will be bored in school and ultimately lose interest in schooling. This is because such a learner should be already doing subjects such as Politics, History, Public governance, International relations, Leadership, and Political professional ethics. Now, the problem is that there is not even a single secondary school in South Africa that offers these subjects except History! A learner such as this one would therefore be bored and lose interest in schooling and arguably develop behavioral problems in the classroom.The reason for this would be the fact that the school curriculum system is excluding the personal traits and interests of this learner.

A learner passionate about Journalism and Media studies is currently lost and hates school. She/He has already lost hope of becoming a Journalist, News reporter, Media communications specialist etc. This is because the learner is in the public secondary school, where there’s no subject or any practical learning programme in line with what he/she hopes for in life. Subjects like; Broadcast journalism, News reporting, Communications (Languages – English and other languages), Media Studies, Editing, Professional skills etc. The curriculum system in South Africa doesn’t cover such a range of subjects in its public schooling. Only private schooling curriculum system can offer this in the name of “School of Journalism and Media Studies”. But private education system in South Africa is expensive and public education system has an onus to offer qualitatively relevant education to the learners. Thus, this learner is again excluded by the curriculum system as it doesn’t cater for his/her desired career path. One wonders thereafter, what is this learner being taught at school?.

Same applies with learners interested in Law, no South African secondary school offers Constitution as a subject, alongside with Legal studies, Roman law or Family law etc. These learners are bound to feel left out by the curriculum system. Another reason for your child to be bored and disinterested in schooling is because learning in secondary school is theoretical and hardly practical. That is why Simnandi Solutions (Pty) Ltd (private education organization in Johannesburg) proposed a Personalized Education Curriculum System (see video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tqofH2qkSU ). The personalized education curriculum is arguing  that even though the NCS 20 credit recognized subjects such as Drama, Art, and EGD etc, and such are at the learners disposal, however they are not well structured, because learners take these subjects with other irrelevant subjects that normally hinder the progress of their schooling careers. Personalized education curriculum system calls for transformation of the current curriculum and restructuring of the education system, to be in accordance with learners career paths rather than the current mass schooling system South Africa has.

Our conclusion, as long as learners are forced to undergo a curriculum (set of subjects) that doesn’t correspond with their desired career paths, there would always be phenomenon of progressed learners, matric rewrite etc. And these learners’ failures are the results of the failures of the education curriculum system in South Africa, not that of the learners.

“The quality of education must present opportunities for our children. If we can’t do that, we will not succeed” – Hon Panyaza Lesufi