Social conflicts over African education in South Africa from the 1940's to 1976

Abstract

Contemporary work in the Sociology of Education has been sharply polarized between approaches which emphasize the reproductive role of education systems and those which emphasize the role of popular resistance and culture in shaping the social relations of schooling. That opting for either of these two divergent approaches poses serious theoretical dilemmas is demonstrated particularly sharply by attempts to analyze the South African education system for Africans in the years between the 1940s and 1976. On the one hand, it is widely seen as a system which maintained relations of class and racial inequality; on the other it produced an enormous student rebellion in 1976. The thesis suggests that viewing education systems as part of the state, understood as a contested field of social relations, offers a way of investigating educational conflict which avoids both the functionalism of reproductionist perspectives and the voluntarist tendencies of culturalist interpretations. It enables the valid insights of these theories to be integrated into an analysis without their characteristic drawbacks. On this basis a series of analytical propositions about Bantu Education are generated.

The thesis argues that the relationship between Bantu Education policy and capitalism was changing and contingent rather than fixed, as previous analyses have implied. The state educational bureaucracy did not function as an instrument of capital; rather, at certain times its aims were complimentary with the needs of capital, and at other times, largely contradictory with them, The education system reproduced varying levels of skill in the work force across time. Urbanization and industrialization, were central forces moulding education policy, the introduction of Bantu Education policy was a response to urban crisis. The thesis argues that the way in which state education policy was pursued was partly shaped by popular movements. There was a battle within the education system between the hegemonic project of government and mass resistance. Changes in popular culture affected the nature of popular responses to educational structures. Teachers' responses were particularly affected by their ambiguous structural position.

The thesis attempt to test these arguments through a historical investigation of the period from the 1940s to 1976. It argues that the roots of Bantu Education policy need to be sought in the social crisis resulting fro~ urbanization and industrialization, Which affected South African society from the 1940s. In the education sphere,

this crisis was manifested in the inability of the existing black education system to cope with the needs of urban youth, growing conflict within the mission schools, and disaffection and radicalization of the African teaching profession. In these circumstances dominant class opinion favored state intervention and restructuring of the education system. The implementation of Bantu Education from 1955 was initially focused on resolving the urban crisis, by providing for the social control of the urban working class and reproduction of a semi-skilled work force. A notable campaign of resistance, in the form of school boycotts by the African National Congress, opposed the policy in 1955-1956, but eventually broke down, primarily because of its inability to rival the state's capacity to provide mass schooling. other forms of resistance to state policy, such as opposition to the establishment of school boards, teacher activism and student riots, were too. dispersed and limited to block it. By the early sixties, a new, state run, cheap education system had been established. However the grim material conditions in that system, and its racist administration, prevented it from exploiting Opportunities to win active popular support. In the 19608, government, enjoying favorable political and economic conditions, moved to a more rigid linking of education policy to the enforcement of territorial apartheid, especially by preventing the

expansion of urban black secondary, technical and higher education in the urban areas. It appeared that a degree of popular acquiescence in the education system was developing, with the stabilization of popular participation in the school board system and in conservativee teachers organizations. However, the system was generating new industry, was adversely affected by skill shortages increased by government educational policy, in the early 1970s industry launched a strong campaign for change in educational policy, which resulted in a government shift toward expansion of urban schooling. By the mid-1970s the changing political situation outside and inside the country, changes in youth culture, new ideological influences, and the material problems of the expanding schooling system were creating a new and more politicized culture of resistance amongst urban African youth .The implementation of a new language policy by government produced first the disaffection of school boards and then revolt amongst students. The conclusion argues that the analysis developed in the thesis has justified the claim. that the theoretical approach adopted in it goes beyond the limitations of reproductionist and culturalist studies.