scholarly journals Missed opportunities: The rhetoric and reality of social justice in education and the elision of social class and community in South African Education Policy.

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Salim Vally
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Critical Education ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Initial Application ◽  
Class Context

This article examines the paradox of post-apartheid education policies which established the formal basis for social justice and equity through legislation while in reality these laudable goals remain unattainable and elusive. The article is informed by and builds on the conceptualisation and analysis of the barriers to social justice and equality in education by global and local critical, post-colonial and political economy of education scholars. It critically outlines the key arguments and studies around these concepts and attempts to show the strengths and limitations of their analyses. Conceptual coherence was achieved through a theoretical framework which focuses on social class, community and critical education policy. An original contribution is made by extending and adapting some of these views, beyond their initial application, to support the education initiatives of South African social movements in poor communities. In concert with the latter, local education policy analyses will be critiqued for not paying sufficient attention to issues of social class, context and community voices in education.

scholarly journals Enacting Social Justice in Education through Spiritual Leadership

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Perumal ◽  
Graham Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
South African ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Spiritual Leadership ◽  
The South ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Design Data ◽  
School Communities ◽  
South African Schools Act

Promulgated by Nelson Mandela in December 1996, South Africa’s post-Apartheid Constitution draws on the Bill of Rights to affirm the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. As an emerging democracy, South Africa further seeks to address issues of social justice and equality in education through the South African Schools Act of 1996. This Act sets out policies and practices intended to redress past injustices and support the rights of learners, educators and parents. Drawing on critical feminist theory, this study explored the experiences of female educational leaders in South Africa’s disadvantaged rural school communities. This qualitative research project adopted a case study research design. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and observations. The aims of this paper are: (i) to investigate the principles of social justice and equity as expressed through spiritual leadership; and (ii) to interpret these principles in relation to education policies. Identifying connectedness and spirituality as prerequisites for spiritual leadership, the study found that spiritual leadership is a means through which social justice leadership can be enacted. While the South African Schools Act upholds the notion that public schools promote democracy through respect for all and tolerance of diverse religious beliefs, this paper does not conflate spirituality with religion. It instead, explores alternative interpretations which explore spiritual leadership and restorative justice as vehicles through which equity and social justice can be understood and enacted.

The Mikado and the Shogun (P.V. Narasimha Rao and Arjun Singh)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political History ◽  
Indian Education ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
School History ◽  
Economic Ideology ◽  
Personality And Politics ◽  
History Books

This chapter describes the personality and politics of Arjun Singh who was Minister of MHRD for about nine years in two spells (1991–95 and 2004–9), and left a deep imprint on Indian education policies. It also describes the developments during 1991–6, a watershed in Indian economic and political history which among others marked the end of Nehruvian era and the unquestioned sway of hegemony of the liberal-left ideas about nationalism, identity, and secularism which were regnant from Independence. It outlines how Arjun Singh built his political career around a fiery commitment to secularism, leftist economic ideology, and social justice, and how that commitment served him well in his battles with political rivals including the Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. It also outlines Arjun Singh’s strategic use of MHRD to cultivate ‘progressive’ intellectuals, and further his political agenda. It elaborates the conceptual underpinnings of the perennial controversy about school history books, and offers a blow by blow account of the controversy during period 1967–1996 which includes the reign of Indira Gandhi, Janata Party, and P.V. Narasimha Rao.

History of Education Policymaking in India, 1947-2016

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
History Of Education ◽  
Indian Education ◽  
The Political ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Education Commission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Judicial Policymaking ◽  
Political Economic

This book chronicles the history of education policymaking in India. The focus of the book is on the period from 1964 when the landmark Kothari Commission was constituted; however, to put the policy developments in this period into perspective major developments since the Indian Education Commission (1882) have been touched upon. The distinctiveness of the book lies in the rare insights which come from the author’s experience of making policy at the state, national and international levels; it is also the first book on the making of Indian education policy which brings to bear on the narrative comparative and historical perspectives it, which pays attention to the process and politics of policymaking and the larger setting –the political and policy environment- in which policies were made at different points of time, which attempts to subject regulation of education to a systematic analyses the way regulation of utilities or business or environment had been, and integrates judicial policymaking with the making and implementation of education policies. In fact for the period subsequent to 1979, there have been articles- may be a book or two- on some aspects of these developments individually; however, there is no comprehensive narrative that covers developments as a whole and places them against the backdrop of national and global political, economic, and educational developments.

Rape Appraisals: Class Mobility, Social Geography, and Sexual Morality Tales in Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda

2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842110080
Author(s):  
C. Shawn McGuffey
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Stressful Events ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Rape Survivors ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Interdisciplinary scholarship in violence and trauma studies suggest that a person’s interpretation of stressful events contours how the person will respond. It is through the two-part appraisal process that survivors determine how they will cope. This project utilizes an identity-based approach to demonstrate that survivors use group-based ideologies such as social class, geography, gender, sexuality, and, for some, race to appraise their accounts of violence, assess their coping strategies, and manage traumatic events. Using the cross-cultural accounts of 146 Black Ghanaian, South African, and Rwandan women rape survivors, the findings extend the appraisal approach by highlighting how survivors in this study utilized sexual morality tales to construct a variety of appraisal accounts to interpret their assaults and to justify their coping strategies. I call these appraisals opportunities, possibilities, limitations, and solidarities. These differing appraisals demonstrated that social milieu contours the psychological experience of violence and can engender both parallel and divergent interpretations across social class and cultural contexts. Last, the implications of these findings for comparative sexual assault studies, theories of traumatic coping, gender and development, and intersectionality are discussed.

scholarly journals Inclusive education policy provision in South African research universities

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Ramaahlo ◽  
Kerstin Monika Tönsing ◽  
Juan Bornman
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Research Universities ◽  
Inclusive Education Policy

Colonial vindications. More on the history of South African prehistoric research

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-55
Author(s):  
Nathan Schlanger
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Economic Potential ◽  
African Archaeology ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Archaeology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Power Games

Together with the welcome insights they have brought to the matters at hand, the archaeological dialogues here engaged have certainly made me appreciate where my claims could be modified and my arguments amplified. Since I have already been taxed with a questionable insistence on setting the record straight, and with a penchant for academically coup de poing-ing my way through the archaeological establishment and its established historiography, I may as well persevere and thank the commentators for helping me grasp the following key point: what has been motivating a substantial part of my investigations, I can now better specify, is a growing unease with the well-established paradigm of ‘colonial vindication’. This is not, let me hasten to add, a reference to the genuine injustice done to those indigenous populations whose pasts have been expropriated and denigrated by the colonizing powers (i.e. Trigger's sense of ‘colonial archaeology’). Likewise, there is obviously no denying that the globalization of archaeology in the colonial and post-colonial eras has entailed considerable intellectual and institutional struggles, alongside innumerable power games, financial calculations and scientific compromises – and here Shepherd is surely right to give as example the ‘cradle of humanity’, a shifting zone whose ideological, diplomatic and economic potential Smuts had already fully sized in the 1930s (cf. Schlanger 2002b, 205–6). Rather, what I wish here to open to scrutiny is this apparently long-standing notion that South African archaeology has been systematically ‘done down’, ‘passed over’ and ‘badly used’ (Shepherd's terms) by the metropole – making it quite evident that its history, if not its ethos, should be primarily geared towards securing due recognition and redress.

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