Decolonising Schools in South Africa

This book explores the challenge of dismantling colonial schooling and how entangled power relations of the past have lingered in post-apartheid South Africa.

It examines the ‘on the ground’ history of colonialism from the vantage point of a small town in the Karoo region, showing how patterns of possession and dispossession have played out in the municipality and schools. Using the strong political and ontological critique of decoloniality theories, the book demonstrates the ways in which government interventions over many years have allowed colonial relations and the construction of racialised differences to linger in new forms, including unequal access to schooling. Written in an accessible style, the book considers how the dream of decolonial schooling might be realised, from the vantage point of research on the margins. This Karoo region also offers an interesting case study as the site where the world’s largest radio telescope was recently located and highlights the contrasting logics of international ‘big science’ and local development needs.

This book will be of interest to academics and scholars in the education field as well as to social geographers, sociologists, human geographers, historians and policy makers.

Chapters 1 and 10 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Table of Contents

1. The long reach of coloniality: setting the scene from a marginal place; 2. Schooling and inequality: rhythms of sameness and difference; 3. Colonialism, possession, and dispossession: the Karoo and its people; 4. Schooling in place and time: the Cape Colony in the 1800s; 5. Apartheid’s local forms: municipality, school, and church in Carnarvon; 6. Ending apartheid: in the crucible of the old, the new is formed; 7. Preserving privilege in schooling: from the vantage point of Carnarvon; 8. Changing the hegemony of race in schooling: the task of decolonising; 9. The SKA comes to town: ‘big science’ and development; 10. Towards decolonising schooling: realising the impossible dream?; Index