In recent weeks it has emerged that the KZN branch of SADTU (The South African Democratic Teachers Union) called on teachers to mark the matric (grade12) final papers "carefully" asking for "biased marking in favour of black students. This after they went on strike in protest of low wages and low housing subsides. While I perfectly agree that teachers and all other essential services in South Africa does not get paid enough for the work they do and supported the strike, I will not and can never condone the call made by SADTU.

I am sure you will sit back and say "yes, that's because you are white", should this have been your assessment on the first paragraph. You are sadly mistaken, the issue of race did not even enter my mind when I started writing this. Looking at this realistically, SADTU as the unions calling for this type of marking has done a disservice to those students they are referring to. With this call being made public as it has, they are creating a huge problem in job hunting for these studies.

As the union, they've now called on this type of situation which will leave prospective employers in the coming years wondering whether these studies did "enjoy preferential marking" or whether they've actually passed on merit. Putting yourself in the shoes of an employer, what would you be doing in this case? Will you employ the candidate or will you rather look for someone else? Sadly this question is one that only the person sitting in that chair will be able to answer. South Africans (no matter their racial background) are not stupid.

The calls for this will also result in the lowering of educational standards in a country that's loosing professionals on a daily basis. In the long run this will do nothing to improve on the current situation, it will only make it worse. Lowering the educational standard will show a marked improvement in the pass rate, however it's just cosmetic, underneath it all we will still have bright and hard working students with a substandard education. I do not and will forever fail to see the logic behind this type of move. Maybe that's where my problem lies, I look at situations with logic. I doubt there was ant sort of logic involved when this statement was made by the KZN branch of SADTU.

Statements like this is unbecoming to teachers, those people that we trust to train and prepare our youth for a future in South Africa. Those we entrust the future leaders of our country to, stop saying stupid things and try and make people believe that South African youth (in this case black youth) are stupid. They are not, every South African has the mental capacity to compete on the international stage with great success. I think it's about time teachers start being teachers and stop trying to convince the world otherwise.

As a final thought, I would venture as far as saying that should the pass rate of this years grade 12 students declined from previous years, unions might want to take a look at themselves in the mirror. Your decisions led to a country wide strike, knowing full well the impact it will have on the student that's about to finish their school years. I will fully lay the blame at your door should the pass rate be as abysmal as it is expected to be this year. I hope you are proud of yourselves, statements like the one made by your KZN branch just goes to show the levels you would stoop to in avoiding taking the blame for decisions made for the right reasons, but at the wrong time.