No, not that Will Smith. William Smith, the South African legend. And no, I’d never heard of him either. But it seems like we all should have.
William Smith was a South African mathematics and science teacher, and TV producer/presenter. He died in Perth this week, at the age of 85, and it would appear that all of South Africa is mourning his passing. Smith had to have been doing something very very right.
Smith had a TV program, Learning Channel, in the 90s, which appears to have been very widely watched and much treasured in a country with great educational inequities. I haven’t been able to locate any videos of Smith in action, or much of anything about him, but here is a brief description of the program:
Using felt-tip pens and a whiteboard with a video camera trained on it, William Smith helped generations of South African schoolkids with the answers and solutions on how to solve high school math problems from algebra and trigonometry to physics as well as chemistry, biology and English.
So, a very simple bare bones program, and apparently Smith was famous for winding up with felt marks all over his hands. Probably the most comparable figure in Australia was Julius Sumner Miller, although Miller had a Professor Frink air about him. By comparison, Smith seems to have been a charming and very gentle, fatherly figure, and who had a profund influence on the country. Even before his TV fame, Smith was teaching to all-comers, including black kids when it was illegal for him to do so. Smith talks a bit about his teaching here, and below is a lovely interview with Smith from a few years ago, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University:
If I haven’t been able to locate any videos of Smith in action, here is Smith from around 2004, riffing off his TV character as part of a campaign against child sexual abuse:
And, here is a very funny and heartfelt parodying of Smith’s program by South African comedian, Casper de Vries:
Great teachers are as great as anybody. William Smith was clearly one of the greatest.
It is really great that people like him exist, but it is disappointing that we don’t hear about them.
I think it is understandable in its way, especially given it was 20+ years ago. Education is very localised, and I think Smith’s charm and great importance was very much a South African thing.
Thanks Marty, I was born in Cape Town but had not heard about William either, but I wish I had.
Had a good belly laugh with Casper’s parody. It would be great to see him do a parody of the Mathologer.
I travelled to South Africa in 2002, ending up in Cape Town for a week or so. I flicked through TV channels while I was there and found the Learning Channel. That in itself was a surprise. If it was not an episode of Will Smith, then it was a show very similar to that you describe. The set included the bare essentials. I recall thinking how amazing it was that something like this was on TV, and wondering why there was not something like it available on Australian screens (maybe via The ABC). I believe spoke to some locals about it, who spoke glowingly of it.
Thanks for stimulating a nice memory.
Rest in peace, Will Smith.
Thanks, Anthony. I guess one question is why SA TV even let him do it. Perhaps because SA was more culturally isolated from the Western media and world, and so was less populated by Big Ideas guys. As for why it seems to have worked well, Smith briefly talks about that in the interview in the above video: he consciously wanted the program to have a simple, uncluttered feel, like a (good) classroom).