The educational impact of teachers' organisations (1925-1992) on the Indian community in South Africa

Abstract

The investigation contributes to a broader understanding of the hegemonic role of teacher organisations and their relation to the dominant structures in society. It also contributes to educational theory since it extends the traditional assertion of an individual teacher who acts as an agent of capitalism and who serves to foster the interests of the State, to teachers who operate through an organisation which becomes more powerful in articulating this hegemony. The historic evidence shows that for much of the period under investigation these teacher organisations have either endorsed, or else have failed to challenge in significant ways, the use of education by the State to ramify the ideology and practice of apartheid. In addition these organisations have had no power to compel action from political and educational authorities. Decades of compliance with State policy, or unwillingness to forcefully articulate the obvious injustices of that policy, have inevitably led to a position whereby established teacher bodies became inward looking. Ultimately, these teacher bodies could not offer a fundamental critique of the apartheid education system and therefore could not empower their members to transform society as they worked within a structural-functional and liberal framework. However, the research also shows that teachers as a collective group became capable of resisting dominant ideologies, especially during the post-1984 period. Progressive teacher organisations, fuelled by the labour movement and African nationalism convicted many conservative teacher bodies to eschew ethnicity and agitate for a unified, democratic non-racial, non-sexist State with a single Ministry of Education. This period saw an escalation in the struggles of resistance by teacher organisations against a newly established Tri-cameral parliamentary system. These empowered members effectively resisted the increasing bureaucratisation and political interference in education through which the State sought to control teachers. The study offers a new way of perceiving teacher organisations as they become involved in long term struggles of transformation which incorporates the reconstruction of a post-apartheid society.