Players or pawns? : "professionalism" and teacher disunity in the Western Cape, 1980-1990

Kihn, Paul

Players or pawns? : "professionalism" and teacher disunity in the Western Cape, 1980-1990

Master Thesis

1993

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Focussing primarily on black teacher groups, this dissertation will describe the remarkable events within teacher politics in the Western Cape in the 1980s, following from the Soweto uprising of 1976. The decade of the eighties marked massive changes in the political and educational context within which teachers worked. After 1976, schools became the focus of opposition to the apartheid state. The atmosphere within schools changed as many students rejected the schooling proffered them by the state, and the "professional" implementation of state schooling by teachers. The liberation movement grew as the decade progressed, bolstered by a militant black trade union movement. The liberation struggle expanded and community-based protest drew schools into a broader, societal opposition to the state. The nature of schooling changed, as students and other elements of the liberation movement rejected apartheid education, and began fostering alternative education. Most notably, People's Education articulated both a rejection of state education and a desire for relevant, democratic schooling.