Positioning Learners in Post-Apartheid South African Schools: A Case Study of Selected Multicultural Durban Schools
✍ Scribed by Sandra McKay; Keith Chick
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 108 KB
- Volume
- 12
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0898-5898
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✦ Synopsis
This article examines the positioning of learners in six newly integrated primary and secondary schools in the Durban area. Drawing on data gathered through classroom observations, teacher and principal interviews, school documents and policies, and classroom materials and textbooks, the authors explore the various ways in which the students in these multiracial schools are given an identity. They argue that although there is some attempt to recognize the students' ethnic and linguistic background, by and large, school personnel through their school policies, methods, and materials are not promoting the multilingualism and multiculturalism explicitly advocated in the new South African language-in-education policy. Rather, three discourses -an Englishonly discourse, a decline-of-standards discourse, and a one-at-a-time discourse -serve to marginalize the use of Zulu and the multiculturalism of the student population.
South Africa is a country in flux. The changes brought about by the collapse of an apartheid system have resulted in the need to reformulate social relationships in all realms of life. In this article, we focus on the establishment of new social relationships and identities in six of the newly integrated schools of the Durban metropolitan area. We give particular attention to the manner in which teachers and administrators in these schools are positioning their new multiethnic/