Factors and agency leading to curriculum renewal: a basic review of the history of formal schooling in South Africa
Article by:Sibusiso Mnyanda and Nqaba Mpofu
Abstract
The education system of South Africa historically is built on the backdrop of a dehumanizing curriculum and pedagogy. Today, advances in education in contemporary South Africa are aimed at responding to skills shortages and other social implications as a result of this dehumanising condition. At the same time, efforts at promoting ‘social awareness’ and a humanising pedagogy are relatively new in the South African context following the country’s oppressive history. It is important then to analyse the agents and factors within this backdrop (pre-colonial and colonial), that stain the current education system in post apartheid/1994 so as to aid the effort of curriculum review and renewal in formal schooling (pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions).
Introduction
Institutionalised education in South Africa has a strong background to the forces of colonial conquest. The opening moment of formal education in South Africa coincides with the colonial experience at the Cape in 1652. Six years after the Dutch East India Company established its colony at the Cape, the first formal schooling is begun in 1658 . Prior to this, development of knowledge in this society relied on culture, collective custom and basic rituals of the inhabitant (not super- imposed capitalistic tendencies such as exploitive economic development of a few by means of another). The main agenda in the eventual establishment of schooling institutions was to prepare colonised inhabitants of the region into cheap labourers for colonist. This physical labour (as rudimentary as it was) did require a certain skills training programme, a limited skills programme at that. This was due to the kind of work they were put under (farm work, domestic duties and so forth). Applied knowledge and skills were not necessary, as the conditions employment were a forced labour. The kind of education, curriculum and pedagogy then was then applied had to produce a labourer who was almost inhumane in nature, lacked fundamental critique of the working conditions such that the forced labourer had no alternative but to be a perpetual student who is detached from the process of knowledge production within his/her societal domain. When one looks at the history of education in South Africa within the scope of education as a means to provide the nation state with a labour force, it is important to look at factors that influenced the socialisation of individuals as they progressed through the education ‘system’. It is also essential to note that this education was designed to remove the labourer from the sanctity of their cultural norms, customs rituals and belief systems. These would hinder the process of desired schooling. The ‘barbaric ‘customs of the uncivilised and uneducated had to be eradicated, so that they can be well groomed servants of the colonist. Missionary work of the British and Scottish in the late 18th and early 19th century is a primary example of the magnitude of zeal that the colonist had while complementing the ’ limited skills training programme for labourers’ that colonial masters were enforcing. Thus the education/curriculum was also changed as skills required by labourers for mining became more specialised. The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand brought a rapid increase in economic activity and the need for labour, especially specialised labour.
