scholarly journals Lifelong learning as cruel optimism: Considering the discourses of lifelong learning and techno-solutionism in South African education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Black
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
South African ◽  
African Education ◽  
South African Education

Is Decentralisation a Suitable Response to Improve South African Rural Education?

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Kevin Teise ◽  
Emma Barnett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Education ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
South African ◽  
School Level ◽  
High Quality ◽  
African Education ◽  
Departments Of Education ◽  
South African Education ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency

South Africa (SA) has a decentralised education system. It is generally assumed that decentralisation improves the effectiveness and efficiency of education by responding to the needs, values, and expectations of both local and rural communities. A large part of SA could be described as rural and a large number of learners attend rural schools. This makes rural education a significant part of the South African education context. With education being decentralised, and with decentralisation being heralded as the panacea to the problems faced by rural communities as well as rural education, the assumption is that rural education should be of a high quality. This desk-top paper assesses the potential of decentralisation to improve the quality and effectiveness of South African rural education. This it does by locating decentralisation within neoliberalism which this paper argues is the impetus behind the decentralisation of South African education, and the reason for the decline in the quality and effectiveness of rural education. The paper also highlights certain tensions between the various decentralised spheres of governance, namely the central and provincial Departments of Education and school-level governance structures. The paper further indicates how these tensions potentially hamper the effectiveness and efficiency of rural education. The paper concludes with some recommendations aimed at improving rural education.

scholarly journals Critical agency in the post-apartheid education system

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazir Carrim
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
South African ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Education System ◽  
The South ◽  
African Education ◽  
South African Education

This paper looks at critical agency in the South African education system. There has been a consistent linking of critical thinking with critical agency under apartheid, and that this was constructed by a ‘critical struggle’ (Touraine, 1985) against apartheid domination. However, this changed significantly in the post-apartheid moment, where compliance with the newly elected government is emphasised, and could be viewed in terms of ‘positive struggles’ (Touraine, 1986). These, however, limit critical agency in the post-apartheid formation. There is, nonetheless, evidence of critical agency being enacted in the post-apartheid education system. The importance of highlighting those forms of critical agency is crucial in order to enhance social justice in the post-apartheid educational system and society. This paper also links critical agency in the post-apartheid situation with the postcolonial and postmodern conditions because such conditions affect the possibilities of critical agency not only in South Africa but more generally.

scholarly journals PURE POLITICKING! RACIALISED BLAME GAMES AND MORAL PANIC IN THE CASE OF A SOUTH AFRICAN HIGH SCHOOL

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
MARTHINUS STANDER CONRADIE
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
South African ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Structural Determinants ◽  
African Education ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Politicians ◽  
South African Education ◽  
Practical Model ◽  
Insight Into

This study combines two discourse analytic frameworks, and explores the utility of this combination for unpacking journalistic opinions written in response to a polarising and racialised event in South African education: the Overvaal High School incident. It uncovers strategic constructions of racism within politicised blame games, in the context of Overvaal, and discloses how blame-assertion and blame-denial became implicated in framings of moral panic. Methodologically, this study relies on the concept race trouble, as well as a practical model of argumentation. In conjunction, these two approaches supply insight into both the calculated construction of racism, as well as the incorporation of these constructions into arguments aimed at rationalising blame-assertion and blame-denial. The results are interpreted within theorisations of moral panic. The findings showcase how arguments are produced to blame an individual politician for escalating racial antagonism around Overvaal, instead of offering a deeply historicised and contextualised account of the incident. Consequently, the arguments that shaped the opinion pieces, and the framing of racism involved in these arguments, ultimately obfuscate inquiry into structural determinants of racial inequity. Implicitly, this framing of racism and its incorporation into argumentation and blame games, produce a form of moral panic, in which South Africans racialised as white are construed as embattled by self-serving (black) politicians. Such politicians are vilified, or rendered as folk devils, and the results indicate how this process evades penetrating analyses of racialisation and its intersection with unequal education.  

The birth of educational archaeology in South Africa

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (283) ◽  
pp. 159-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda B. Esterhuysen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
South African Education

Archaeology in education has been introduced in South Africa only recently as the politics of the past precluded the application of archaeology in the classroom. This paper presents the background to South African education and educational archaeology and discusses some of the issues and studies undertaken in South Africa. It also offers comment on the factors which determine and shape educational archaeology of the present and those that may affect the discipline of archaeology in the future.

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