A critique of the structural deterministic approach to education and the paradoxical struggles it spawned against Bantu education

Abstract

The question which the mini thesis seeks to answer is:- To what extent did oppositional projects against Bantu Education advance the emancipatory process in the sphere of Education? The question has been prompted by the widely-held notion that oppositional projects against Bantu Education went a long way towards advancing the struggle for a better system of education.

The line of argument which the mini thesis seeks to advance is that oppositional projects against Bantu Education, while they contained some emancipatory moments were to a large extent counter productive as they undermined the culture of learning and teaching in the schooling system.

This mini thesis offers a critique of the theoretical analysis employed by the teachers, students and other civil society structures that operated in the sphere of education in South Africa in their struggle against Bantu Education. The tool of analysis employed was structural determinism postulated by Marxists like Althusser who tended to favour a deterministic explanation of events over those which provide theoretical space for human agency and deliberation. This approach gained ascendency over all other theories of analysis in the course of the struggle against Bantu Education.

This mini thesis, however, does acknowledge the fact that the teachers, students and civil society structures saw through the ideological smokescreen propagated by the state through Bantu Education to give ideological sanction to oppression, but charges them with displaying impotence in generating the power to engage the dominant class in theoretical ways that were emancipatory. Although they saw through the pretences of Bantu Education they failed to stimulate a discovery of the best ways to advance the project of transformation and emancipation. Thus, by the oppositional projects they engaged in, they condemned themselves to a specific place in a system of exploitation and oppression.