About Stand Your Truth
Founder of Stand Your Truth
Mandisa Mndela
Mandisa Mndela – Founder at Stand Your Truth, Author and a South African Native, took a Stand, and emerged as a unique voice and astute observer of the contemporary challenges which affect the parental/child dynamic.
From her own personal journey, a child of privileged to a neglected and abused youngster, a teenage mother, a failed marriage, and a successful single parent provider, Mandisa has endured and analyzed vast dimensions of life, acquiring insights which have propelled her to inhabit her role as a compelling author, life enthusiast, and an education thought leader.
Her life experiences chronicled in her 5 books
Which has ultimately and uniquely positioned her to provide insights to the perplexing questions which plague the modern child-parent familial dynamic.
All of which has culminated in the creation of the curriculum and platform that bears human experience.
“Moved by the displacement of our age, the lack of sense of worth and purpose of our young people, it has become clear that in addition to the standard educational curriculum, there has been a corresponding need for inner/emotive curriculum which seeks to inform, strengthen the health and fitness of students in their imagination and self-esteem.” says Mandisa.
With more and more well-meaning parents stymied by the challenging workplace/career demands required to provide the child/student with shelter/food/clothing/education fees, there is often little time and energy left for parents to adequately address the needs of the child/students other developmental intangibles.
In turn, Stand Your Truth provides an organized mechanism through which this critical life developmental void may be addressed.
As a public speaker, Mandisa talks of what she believes are the three-tiers of self-realization
Purpose.
Vision.
Service.
SYT Philosophy
At Stand Your Truth (SYT), we are passionate about solving one of society’s most significant problems. It starts with education. Our philosophy and our curricula have been developed to empower our children, young adults, and parents to navigate these challenges and difficulties and help our people unlock their human potential and discover their unique inherent talents.
At the very core of the SYT philosophy is the quest to unlock human potential by tapping into the well of human experiences to unblock subconscious experiences that hinder the exploration of inherent talent embedded in the human being. The philosophy is here to make sure that visions are lived, not just framed.
The focus, therefore, is on the issues our existence is facing, connecting those issues to the solution, and taking a stand, by being the dispenser of the remedy, it’s guide, nurturer and monitor of the growth, progress, and result of it.
Given the priorities of modern society, sometimes this is easier said than done. In the guise of her alter-ego, a mezzo-soprano, violinist, Mandisa has appeared on numerous occasions on the world stage, performing.
I find it a good metaphor for my life thus far. We all have a unique voice inside of us which we have to find an outlet for. When we are born we are not given a manual to life, so it is really trial and error but if you stand your truth, lean on your purpose as you build on your aspirations in contribution to this world in service, then, you can be fulfilled.
– Mandisa Mndela
Curriculum Reviews
Loosely described (by scholars in the field), pedagogy is the art of teaching. Different practices are informed by different educational philosophies and their assumptions about learning, the intellectual learning of a child, teaching style, and curricula.
Conservative or closed pedagogy sees learning as the absorption of specific bodies of knowledge, the child’s ability as determined by hereditary and environmental factors external to the school, the appropriate teaching style as one where teachers are [experts], and have authority over pupils, and direct the learning of subordinates, and the curriculum as the relevant class room knowledge as defined by teachers.
Liberal or open pedagogy conceives of learning as a process and not the acquisition of specific knowledge, the child’s mind as capable of development, teaching as simply guiding this development, and curricula as tailored to suit the pupils’ own expressed interests.
The interpretation of ‘progressive’ and ‘child centred’ teaching methods have been a long standing discourse since the 60’s. Notably here, is the work of Paulo Freire (a Brazilian); who argued it has radical political implications because it emphasises personal autonomy rather than social control, others claim that fully developed ‘progressive’ methods are rarely found beyond the early years of primary school and are unlikely to have any lasting influence on attitudes, or that open pedagogy reflects the middle class value system and is therefore unlikely to have radical implications beyond school.
Others scholars like Bernstein; Suggest that the move towards the integrated studies, an aspect of this pedagogy, may alter the power structure within then teaching staff. In principle, it also disturb traditional authority relations between and pupils, though in practice teachers resist change. The power of the hidden curriculum and the manner in which schools modify ‘progressive’ in practice suggest that pedagogical practices remain fundamentally conservative.
In this interesting work, Mandisa Mndela in her own unique way re-joins thee discourse on pedagogy in a didactical way. She does so, in a practical and/or pragmatic way by attempting to actualise theoretical and conceptual frameworks of analysis on the discourse.
Of importance here, is that she eschews methodological debates on the subject but rather uses her own personal experiences as child of privileged to a neglected and abused youngster, a teenage mother, a failed marriage and a single parent provider, coming from Umtata in South Africa Mandisa has endured and analysed vast dimensions of life, acquiring insights which have propelled her to inhabit her role as an author, life enthusiast, a significant contributor to the body of knowledge, and an education thought leader.
In more than many ways her work, is an interesting piece of art for those interested in curriculum development/advancement and the dynamics thereof.
Leslie Dikeni
Urban Sociologist and Author of South African Development in Question, Habitat and Struggle and co-editor Poverty of Ideas: The Retreat of Intellectuals in New democracies