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| Title: | School boards, school committees and educational politics: aspects of the failure of Bantu education as a hegemonic strategy, 1955-1976 |
| Author: | Hyslop, J. |
| Book title: | Holding their ground: class, locality and culture in 19th and 20th century South Africa |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Pages: | 201-225 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | educational policy black education |
| Abstract: | In 1955 the Nationalist government of South Africa moved to implement the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Among the measures provided for in the Act was the establishment of bodies at a local level which would participate in the administration of schooling in black areas: the school boards and school committees. These boards and committees had to underpin, politically and ideologically, the State's intention to incorporate blacks within separate political structures. They also had to enable more conservative figures in the community to strengthen their position by exercising a degree of real local power. This paper shows that the school board and committee system failed to play the hegemonic role which it was designed to fulfil. Established in the midst of the great political mobilizations of the 1950s, it was subject to immediate political attacks which undermined its legitimacy from the outset. Other important aspects of the failure were the inability of the system to integrate teachers, the government's refusal to listen to criticisms of policy voiced by the representative structures which it had itself established, and ultimately the long simmering traditions of popular resistance in South Africa. Notes, ref. |
