"Not even your own teachers are spared" - an oral history of teaching on the Cape Flats in the 1980s
Date
2023-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: During the Apartheid era, education for African, Coloured and Indian students was poorly resourced, and consequently placed a massive burden on teachers. As Wieder (2002: p. 198) demonstrates, teachers in Black schools were often forced to mediate between oppressive state policies and the protection of young students. For some teachers, teaching was not only about
presenting a standardised curriculum but also being involved in a pedagogy that fostered an understanding of South African politics and society that contested the version presented by the Education Departments of the Apartheid Government. As teachers became more radical, Kihn (2002: p. 325) suggests that the concept of the “professional” teacher saw a significant shift
from the late 1970s, following the resurgence of anti-Apartheid political organisations in the country, abandoning previous notions of the neutral and apolitical professional towards a more critical, politically engaged educator who firmly rejected Apartheid ideology – together with the growth of popular resistance to the Apartheid system in general. In this study, my interest
is in tracing what became of a generation of politicised teachers in the Western Cape and using their life histories as a means of approaching the experience of the transition to democracy. This research focuses on men who were teachers during this period and examines their adaptation to the role of educator in the same community in which they were raised. The study focuses particularly on teachers who taught on the Cape Flats, in those areas constructed by the
Apartheid state as urban peripheries to restrict Black movement and access to the city centre. The study highlights how these men remember their past teaching, how they envisaged the future at that time, and the disjuncture they feel between their lives – more than 20 years into democracy – and the futures they once imagined. In this way, this research has sought to not only recount what happened in the past, but also present a method of observing the transition from Apartheid and the experience of democracy, of capturing both the hopes from that time that were achieved and those that have been unfulfilled.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar.
Description
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2023.