This essay covers assignment 2 for Education and Ethics. Which focuses on 'Understanding students and student learning in the South African school context'.
UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS AND STUDENT LEARNING IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOL
CONTEXT
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS IN POST GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN EDUCATION
(FOUNDATION PHASE) (PGCE FP)
FOR
EDUCATION AND ETHICS IN SOCIAL CONTEXT - FP (ED4-ETH1)
AT
CORNERSTONE INSTITUTE
BY
…
11 SEPTEMBER 2020
, 1. INTRODUCTION
Research suggests that elite South African schools are facing increasing social challenges in shifting the
historical relationship between quality education and ‘white privilege’ (Epstein, 2014, as cited in Feldman &
Wallace, 2020a). South Africa’s movement to democracy in 1994 resulted in important changes in
education policy that shifted towards creating inclusive education for all regardless of their diverse
background. Even so, it is evident that many of these former white schools lack significant transformation
and continue to perpetuate inequality, despite their attempts to diversify schools through scholarship
programmes that aim to provide quality education to students from disadvantaged communities. Although
they offer the best education the unwritten rules, values and traditions of these schools alienate certain
individuals. Scholarship students continue to be marginalised through forms of symbolic violence that
persist in elite school culture and social norms even with policy changes. Thus, the topic of scholarship
students’ experiences in accessing and assimilating into elite schools will be explored. In order to gain
greater insight into the social inequalities’ students face we look at Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts to
provide a framework for understanding their experiences.
2. BOURDIEU’S THEORY OF PRACTISE AS A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING STUDENT
EXPERIENCES OF ELITE SCHOOLS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Soudien 2012 (as cited in Feldman & Wallace 2020a) noted that for students to gain a sense of belonging
they felt the need to assimilate to the dominant culture of the school, adopting their mannerisms, way of
speaking, and even their physical image. The unanticipated social challenges faced by these students has
led to them abandoning their sense of self and often their culture in an attempt to blend in with the
predominantly white students and teachers. Many students expressed feeling ashamed of where they
come from and isolated from their communities back home. Drawing on research of scholarship students’
experiences we look at the following concepts to understand how they assimilate into elite schools and the
costs these students have had to accept to access quality education.
2.1 FIELD
Bourdieu (as cited in Thomson 2017) maintained that the field of education permeates all other fields of
society as the knowledge and skills learned at schools shape what kind of people they will become and in
turn how they will contribute to society. Those who gain access to elite schools are usually set up for life as
they get to enter the top universities and jobs. The intertwining ‘fields’ that exist in every society are often
unevenly distributed as can be seen in the predominantly white ‘field’ of elite schooling (Feldman &
Wallace, 2020c). Instead of the ‘field ‘ of elite schooling accommodating the students and shifting their
values, students felt it necessary to rather assimilate into the new school culture as they were offered the
opportunity of a lifetime.
The experience of Mandla and Cebisa two scholarship students reveals this sentiment, that although they
did not necessarily agree with certain practises or perceived racialised comments, they felt they were in no
position to speak up and criticize the system that offered them this opportunity (Feldman & Wallace,
2020a). The current state of South African schools is a reflection of the inequalities and elitist ideologies
2
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