The Burning Violin

  Let’s get straight to it: homework, that sacred cow of the school system, might just be the most overrated educational tool ever invented. For decades, we’ve asked children, some barely out of nappies, to drag their weary little bodies home after six hours of school, only to sit down and… do more school. But is this actually doing anything helpful? Or have we simply confused busywork with brilliance? Spoiler alert: it’s the latter. Where’s the Evidence? The great irony of homework is that it’s often defended in the name of “academic rigour,” yet the actual evidence supporting it is flimsier than a Grade 1 glue stick. Alfie Kohn, one of education’s most notorious myth-busters, points out that there’s virtually no evidence that homework improves academic outcomes in primary school. And he’s not alone. Harris Cooper, who has churned out more meta-analyses on the subject than most of us have had hot dinners, found that homework has little to no impact on younger learners’ achie...

  Let’s just get straight to it: South Africans are being taxed to death. Not the neat kind of death with a eulogy and some finger food. No, we’re talking about a slow, grinding, Kafkaesque financial asphyxiation where you wake up every year to a new reason the state has to mug you again, but this time with more paperwork. It used to be simple. You worked, you paid income tax. Fair enough. Roads need building. Hospitals need funding. Someone has to keep Eskom’s lights off. But somewhere in the last three decades, the folks in charge had a eureka moment: Why not tax absolutely everything? And so, they did. The Classic Rinse-and-Repeat Let’s begin with VAT, that sneaky little 15% that’s tacked on to everything except bread and heartbreak. It used to be 14%. Then, with the subtlety of a falling grand piano, the government nudged it up to 15% and never looked back. It’s amazing how something so small can cause such national despair. Then there’s personal income tax. For top ear...