In an ideal world, learning should be a fun, curious and creative process. Unfortunately, the school curriculum focuses almost exclusively on cognitive development. In the process, the lived realities of learners and their social-emotional needs are ignored, except for the lip-service being paid to Life Orientation.
In a country where the majority of learners grow up in poverty, and where abuse, neglect and exposure to violence are some of the adversities faced by many children, we need to carefully consider the destructive assumption that learning happens irrespective of context. Normalisation or the
