Human rights and the construction of identities in South African education

[摘要] This thesis is based on an exploration of human rights (in) South African education. Inorder to do so, however, it has been necessary to explore the origins of the notion ofhuman rights in both its philosophical and legal senses. It covers the ways in which theclaim of an equality of all human beings has developed historically and the ways inwhich they are articulated in the Universal Declaration of human rights and in the 'new”South African Constitution. However, the argument in this thesis is that human rightstend to be generalised and universalised, and as such do not adequately address the waysin which human rights are experienced in specific social formations and in the contexts ofparticular people’s lives. In order to make human rights more specific and personal, Iapply a sociology of human rights using Stuart Hall’s 'theory of articulation” anddemonstrate what this sociological analysis means in the context of South Africa underapartheid. In addition, to prevent reifying social categories and privileging particulartypes of human identity, I explore human rights under apartheid in relation to 'race’,gender and sexual orientation. Throughout, I point to ways in which these identities andsocial categories interconnect with each and balance micro and macro approaches to ananalysis of apartheid.Methodologically this thesis uses Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot’s approach of 'portraiture”in order to capture personal lives within a macro context and I provide accounts in thisrespect of Nelson Mandela and Simon Nkoli. I have also used a combination ofquantitative and qualitative approaches in my investigation of experiences of humanrights in South African education. Teachers’ and learners’ questionnaires were conducted in schools in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in South Africa between1996 and 1998. In addition, individual interviews with Grade 9 teachers were conductedand group interviews with Grade 9 learners in these schools were also done. Classroomobservations in three schools, one in each of the provinces, were also conducted, andindividual interviews with two gay learners also form part of the empirical data of thisstudy. A national survey of what human rights programmes were used by educationalinstitutions and organisations was also conducted. The thesis also contextualises thesampled schools experiences within the post-apartheid dispensation in South Africa,providing an account of how human rights are framed in South Africa generally and inthe South African educational system in particular. Approaches to human rights (in)education are also covered, as are the principles of a human rights education. Theconclusions that I arrive at in this thesis are that there are interventions in regard tohuman rights in South African education which tend to be located within legalistic andintegrated approaches. In addition, experiences of racism in the sampled schools areprevalent within an assimilationist mode. In regard to sexual orientation, sex, gender andsexuality are conflated but the provision of human rights in terms of sexual orientationhas had a positive impact on the sampled gay learners in this study. Finally, I argue thatthe sociological approach to human rights is useful and generative and has enabled thisstudy to access an understanding of human rights in generalised macro terms and inspecific contexts of people’s experiences.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand