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Emerging Voices – The deep divide

3 min read

‘Everybody in Mnqagayi – the principals of schools, their right-hand men [amaphoyisa ezinduna], young people and community councillors – everybody had the same message for the youth researcher team in this KwaZulu-Natal community.”

And the message concerning democracy in rural schools is not cheering, chapter six of Emerging Voices tells us.

‘All the people we spoke to,” the young researchers told the imbizo held at the end of their research there, ‘raised concerns that as a community we are not united in partnership for a common cause.”

Such findings contradict a commonly held view, namely that ‘strong neighbourly bonds hold rural communities together”. On the contrary, the report says, ‘deep divisions run through some of the communities around schooling and education”.

These rifts are apparent among community members, among generations within communities, between communities and schools, and within schools. The key figures in ensuring (or failing to ensure) the democracy within schools envisaged in the South African Schools Act (1996) are: schools themselves, teachers, community and traditional leaders, and education department district officials.

School governing bodies (SGBs) are the chief vehicle ‘for the development of an education community and practice around the school”, the report notes. But rifts were apparent in key areas.

  • Home and school. Parents have faith in education, but the pressures of everyday life result in a ‘conflict between the achievement of [parents’] dreams for the education of their children and the survival of their families”.
  • Teachers and communities. Lack of qualifications, subject knowledge, commitment and sense of vocation are among communities’ criticisms of their children’s teachers. There are certainly many very committed teachers, but the history of primary school teachers in rural areas often militates against their ability to achieve significant transformations in classrooms.

    • ‘From the first mission schools, African teachers taught in primary schools” – but these were only for the few. From the 1950s, with apartheid’s grip tightening, the vast majority of African learners received only primary school education. Even now, there are not enough high schools.

    The training of primary school teachers left a lot to be desired: it consisted of ‘little more than a repetition of the high school syllabus wrapped in an authoritarian pedagogy”. In other words, little in many teachers’ own education prepares them for the transformational role they are expected to perform.

  • School principals. While gender proportions among these crucial leaders have improved (only 51% of heads are men), principals are ‘ambiguous figures”. They teach with their colleagues, but also have to manage and sometimes discipline them. They might be part of their surrounding community, but their prestige and qualifications isolates them within ‘most” rural areas. Principals and teachers ‘dominate” SGBs. Chiefs are influential there too – but parents ‘are largely marginal to them”.
  • District officials. These government figures are seen to be ‘remote”, but there is evidence that ‘that a greater role brings positive benefits in that they improve morale and attendance”.

    • The chapter concludes, schools and SGBs do not ‘live up to the expectation of democracy for robust links between schools and communities”. But there is also a shared perception of the need to unite, discuss problems and communally forge ways of dealing with problems.

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