BHISHO. Teachers’ union SADTU has slammed the poor quality of the go-slow underway in the Eastern Cape, saying that some teachers are working “almost as fast as snails” in direct violation of SADTU’s call that they work “as fast as bricks”. Meanwhile physicists say they may have witnessed another violation, this time of the Law of Conservation of Momentum, as some teachers cease to move even on a molecular level.
Furious SADTU spokescommisar, Gaudeamus Gwede, said that he had been shocked by the behaviour of Eastern Cape teachers he had observed this week.
“They arrive any time between small break and lunch, sleep under their desks, and then send a learner to buy then chips and a Stoney from the corner cafe,” fumed Gwede. “What the hell are these brown-nosing overachievers trying to prove?”
He said that SADTU had instructed all teachers in the province to conduct teaching at specially sanctioned “coma speed”, but added that “some of these Dead Poets Society speed-freaks are clearly teaching at a snail’s pace”.
School principal Gestetner Twala defended his staff, however, saying that they were fully committed to slowing to “barnacle speed”.
“I know that to the casual observer, say, a school inspector pausing at our window before we throw bricks at him, the go-slow looks like teaching as per normal,” he explained. “But we’ve actually taken major strides backwards since the start of the mass action.”
Twala revealed that he had reduced the number of random beatings meted out to learners, and had enforced slightly lower than normal blood alcohol levels in his staff, “to get their metabolisms to slow down”.
SADTU’s Gwede acknowledged these efforts, but said that if teachers were going to reach the level of glacial slowness required for them to be truly revolutionary, they would have to “go deep inside their comfort zone”, possibly learning ancient Buddhist techniques of slowing their heart rate through intense meditation, “or intense ingestion of Stoney”.
Asked what learners thought about the go-slow, Gwede said, “What do the who think? This is about education, fool! Why are you talking about children?”
Meanwhile, scientists at the nearby University of Fort Hare are reportedly thrilled at the possibility that the go-slow may be the first ever observed violation of the Law of Conservation of Momentum.
“Basically, the law states that any body, if acted upon by a large enough force, will move in the direction of that force,” explained Dr Sagan Mbuli. “But what we’ve seen over the past few days is a total cessation of movement, even at the molecular level, of SADTU members.
“Even the full weight of responsibility for the future of the country’s youth pressing against them has failed to propel them into any kind of movement.”
