The Segregated Schooling of Blacks in the Southern United States and South Africa

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Segregated Schooling of Blacks in the Southern United States and South AfricaVanessa Siddle Walker and Kim Nesta ArchungVanessa Siddle Walker and Kim Nesta ArchungPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreBoth the United States and South Africa share similarities in the ways in which they have historically used schooling to subjugate southern African Americans and Black South Africans, respectively. After the Civil War in the United States and with the emergence of a public school system in the South, Whites segregated African Americans into separate schools that received less money in state expenditures per child, maintained poorer facilities, had fewer library books and other material educational advantages, and received little or no transportation for students seeking to attend school. These inequalities continued until well after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared segregated schools unequal in 1954.1 Likewise, in South Africa, Black South Africans received poorer facilities, fewer expenditures per pupil, more poorly trained teachers, and sometimes a shortage of Black teachers.2 These inequalities continued until the historic public elections in April 1994.3 In both settings, until legally mandated to do otherwise, Whites constructed educational systems designed to maintain the privileges of White students and to prepare African and African American students for the subservient roles they were expected to play within the society.4The historical similarities in the ways in which Blacks in both settings were denied justice in the educational systems has been documented by several researchers.5 Yet, attention has not been given to the parallels potentially inherent in the kind of schooling that occurred within the unjust and inequitable environments. In the United States, a broad‐based conversation has only recently begun that considers the ways in which school leaders within the segregated schools attempted to fight injustice and equip African American children to overcome the evils of segregation. In the United States, school leaders in segregated schools provided countereducation to Whites' expectations.6 The extent to which a similar type of countereducation may have occurred in South African classrooms among Black teachers and students has not been adequately addressed.In this article, we propose to explore the similarities in the education of African Americans and Black South Africans during the periods of segregation and apartheid, respectively. It upholds the premises that Africans in the United States and South Africa may have had cultural forms of schooling that have not been included in historical accounts of the schools and that these forms of schooling should be considered in compiling a history of schooling in both contexts. As David Hursh has argued, "There is no one historical narrative to be developed and told. Rather, there are numerous and contested histories as different narratives are based on different perspectives."7 In exploring the cultural forms of schooling in these two oppressed educational environments, the research does not either mitigate or justify the injustice inherent in the educational systems in which both groups were forced to participate, nor does it diminish the accuracy of the historical narrative of oppression. This exploration does consider, however, the ways in which Black teachers and principals constructed education within these oppressive contexts. Specifically, we explore the following questions: (1) What are the ways in which teachers and principals in the apartheid schooling of Black South Africans attempted to teach and motivate students? (2) What, if any, is the relationship between these approaches and those adopted by African Americans in the southern United States during segregation?Results of this exploratory inquiry indicate that the United States and South Africa resembled each other in the nature of the school oppression and that they also resembled one another in the ways in which oppressed people sought to use schools as a mechanism for racial uplift. The available data indicate that oppressed communities valued education for its potential to move the next generation of children beyond the inequities of segregation. Notwithstanding the marked differences in both countries' languages, school systems, and racial groups, the teachers, principals, and parents in both settings used similar strategies to encourage pupils to move beyond their oppressive contexts.1For a comprehensive discussion of the development of African American schooling and curricular efforts after the Civil War, see James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Many scholars have documented the inequalities existing in African American and White schooling throughout the history of segregated schools in the South. See, e.g., Harry S. Ashmore, The Negro and the Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954); Liva Baker, The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred‐Year Struggle to Integrate the Schools (New York: HarperCollins, 1996); Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (New York: Random House, 1977); Thomas M. Pierce, James B. Kincheloe, R. Edgar Moore, Galen N. Drewry, and Bennie E. Carmichael, White and Negro Schools in the South: An Analysis of Biracial Education (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1955).2Numerous scholars have also documented the inequalities in the distribution of resources in South Africa. See, e.g., John Stonier, "Breaking Out of a Separatist Paradigm: Intercultural Education in South Africa," in International Perspectives on Intercultural Education, ed. Kenneth Cushner (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1998), pp. 210–36; John Pape, "Changing Education for Majority Rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa," Comparative Education Review 42, no. 3 (1998): 253–66.3Aslam Fataar, "Access to Schooling in a Post‐apartheid South Africa: Linking Concepts to Contexts," in Education after Apartheid: South African Education in Transition, ed. Peter Kallaway, Glenda Kruss, Aslam Fataar, and Gari Donn (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 1997), pp. 68–85.4Jonathan Jansen, "Curriculum as a Political Phenomenon: Historical Reflections on Black South African Education," Journal of Negro Education 59, no. 2 (1996): 195–206; John Burns, "'Equal' Is Still a Dream in South Africa," New York Times (January 8, 1978); Stonier, p. 218.5Jansen, pp. 195–99; Stonier, p. 211.6The studies examining the structure of schooling in the segregated Black schools constitute three types. The earliest studies appeared in the 2 decades after desegregation, frequently in Black or lesser‐known presses. See Alvis Adair, Desegregation: The Illusion of Black Progress (Lanham, Md.: University of America Press, 1984); Mary Gibson Hundley, The Dunbar Story (1870–1955) (New York: Vantage, 1965); Russell Irvine and Jackie Irvine, "The Impact of the Desegregation Process on the Education of Black Students: Key Variables," Journal of Negro Education 52, no. 4 (1983): 410–22; Faustine Jones, A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence: Dunbar High School of Little Rock, Arkansas (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1981); Frederick Rodgers, The Black High School and Its Community (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1967); Thomas Sowell, "Black Excellence: The Case of Dunbar High School," Public Interest 35 (Spring 1974): 1–21, and "Patterns of Black Excellence," Public Interest 43 (Spring 1976): 26–58. More recent scholarship emerged in the 1990s. Generally, it has been more widely disseminated and discussed. See Tamara Beauboeuf‐Lafontant, "A Movement Against and Beyond Boundaries: 'Politically Relevant Teaching' among African American Teachers," Teachers College Record 100, no. 4 (1999): 702–23; David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Michele Foster, "Constancy, Connectedness, and Constraints in the Lives of African American Teachers," National Women's Studies Journal 3, no. 2 (1990): 233–61, "The Politics of Race: Through the Eyes of African American Teachers," Journal of Education 172, no. 3 (1990): 123–41, Black Teachers on Teaching (New York: New Press, 1997); Rhonda Jeffries, "The Trickster Figure in African American Teaching: Pre‐ and Post‐desegregation," Urban Review 26 (1994): 289–304; Alice McCullough‐Garrett, "Reclaiming the African American Vision for Teaching: Toward an Educational Conversation," Journal of Negro Education 62, no. 4 (1993): 433–40; Vivian Morris and Curtis Morris, Creating Caring and Nurturing Educational Environments for African American Children (Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 2000); George Noblit and Van Dempsey, The Social Construction of Virtue: The Moral Life of Schools (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1996); Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), "Caswell County Training School, 1933–1969: Relationships between Community and School," Harvard Educational Review 63, no. 2 (1993): 161–82, "Valued Segregated Schools for African American Children in the South, 1935–1969: A Review of Common Themes and Characteristics," Review of Educational Research 70, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 253–85, and "African American Teachers in Segregated Schools in the South, 1940–1969," American Educational Research Journal 38, no. 4 (2001). These scholarly descriptions are accompanied by a number of locally published histories that span both time periods. See Lenwood Davis, A History of Queen Street High School, 1928–1968 (Kingston, N.Y.: Tri State Services, 1996); W. Edwards, Preston Royster, and Lazarus Bates, The Education of Black Citizens in Halifax County, 1866–1969 (Springfield, Va.: Banister, 1979); Thelma Cayne Tilford‐Weathers, A History of Louisville Central High School, 1882–1982 (Louisville, Ky.: Central High School Alumni Association, 1996).7David Hursh, "The Struggle for Democracy in South Africa: Race, History and Education," Theory and Research in Social Education 27 (Winter 1999): 104–10, quote on 109.Historical and Contemporary ContextThe significance of curriculum in achieving the stated purpose of schooling and the similarities in desegregation implementation provide a foundation for interpreting the results of this study. Although some overlap occurs in the analysis, the focus will be centered primarily on the experiences of the indigenous African people within South Africa, or Black South Africans, rather than the experiences of the "Coloured" students or Indian students.Curriculum and the Purpose of SchoolingEducation for Black students in South Africa's education system can be summarized by referring to five forms over the country's history. These were (1) traditional African education led by community leaders that integrated education and life experience and that relied on the oral tradition; (2) slave education, brought by European settlers, based on simple Christian religious teaching; (3) mission education, by the early 1800s, that fused Christian principles and European forms of education; (4) Native education, beginning in the 1920s, characterized by the first state‐mandated curriculum and the structural deterioration of Black schools; and (5) Bantu education, the education that apartheid regimented beginning in 1953 and continuing until 1993.8Significantly, the education of Black South Africans was always configured along racial, class, and, sometimes, geographic lines after the arrival of the Europeans. Yet, the curriculum within the schools varied somewhat based on the period of schooling. For example, during the era of the mission schools, Black South Africans able to attend school received an education aimed at converting students to Christianity. In these 5,360 mission‐run schools, Black South Africans also received a basic education in reading and writing that adhered to the basic tenets of the Western tradition. Arguably, this curriculum was designed to dislocate students from valuing their African traditions.9 By contrast, Bantu educational policies introduced an inferior curriculum into Black schools that focused more on nonacademic training.This curricular focus bears some similarity to the experiences of African Americans in the South. After the Civil War, since African Americans were believed to belong to a race that was culturally hundreds of years behind the White race, northern reformers such as Hampton University's Samuel Armstrong sought to teach African Americans that their position was not a result of oppression but the natural process of cultural evolution. He emphasized manual labor over academic preparation and deliberately sought to infuse African American schools with teachers who would teach this philosophy.10 In addition to seeking deliberately to influence the perspectives of those who would teach African American children, northern philanthropists also actively worked to cultivate the type of curriculum to which they believed African American children should be exposed. This curriculum always included manual labor and education for second‐class citizenship.In both the United States and South Africa, the way in which the curriculum was deliberately used to prepare students for subordinate roles in the society is striking. Summarizing the comments of administrators and educators of Bantu education, Jonathan Jansen concludes: "The fundamental assumptions implicit in such formulations were that the position of Blacks in the social, economic, and political life in South Africa was both fixed and natural; thus, education and, in particular, the curriculum, for Blacks had to be directed toward serving those predetermined ends."11 South Africa's former minister of Bantu education, Hendrick Voerwoerd, writes, "Bantu education was designed to produce unskilled and semiskilled laborers among Africans whose access to proper technical and academic training was blocked."12Education in the southern United States was designed to produce similar outcomes. According to historian James Anderson, both schooling for democracy and schooling for second‐class citizenship were "basic traditions in American education." His book, The Education of Blacks in the South, chronicles the rise of industrial education as being considered the appropriate education for African Americans because it would "preclude them from pursuing skilled and professional occupations."13 Among both White southerners and White northern philanthropists, the consistent belief was that Blacks needed a second‐class education to prepare them for the types of second‐class jobs they would assume within the society.Thus, the education of Blacks in both countries was embedded in a system of racial segregation designed to promote Whites into positions of leadership, land ownership, and economic control and to doom Blacks to subservience. The effects of a system deliberately aimed at undermining the educational opportunities of some of its citizens is also documented by research. For example, in South Africa under apartheid, Pape, a teacher, describes the school performance for every 1,000 African pupils. He notes that of the 1,000, only 400 would complete Standard 8, the equivalent of tenth grade in the United States. Of these, 140 would pass the high school exit exams that allowed students to qualify for university admittance. In contrast, for every 1,000 White children, 920 completed Standard 8 and 720 qualified for university admission.14 In the United States, even after decades of desegregation, a similar pattern has been documented in rates of on‐time completion, college going, and educational attainment.158Jansen, pp. 195–96.9Stonier, p. 216; Fataar, pp. 74–75.10Anderson, pp. 32–109.11Jansen, p. 200.12Quoted in Pape (n. 2 above), p. 255.13Anderson (n. 1 above), pp. 1, 91.14Pape.15For a statistical summary of the patterns of African American performance in the United States, see Michael Nettles and Laura Perna, The African American Education Data Book, vol. 3, The Transition from School to College and School to Work (Fairfax, Va.: Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the College Fund/UNCF, 1997).The Similarity in Current Desegregation EffectsSimilarities between the experiences of Blacks in the United States and South Africa do not end with historical accounts. A look at the problems inherent in the desegregation process also provides important data for arguing the need of a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural forms of schooling—and resistance—in the segregated systems. For example, in the United States, almost 5 decades after the Supreme Court declared de jure segregation unconstitutional, recent data indicate that the level of school contact between White students and African American students is currently almost at the level it was in the early 1970s before busing solutions were utilized. Even in the southern states, where desegregated schools have been most visible, the number of African American and White children attending school together is declining, and, where it exists, a resegregation of students within the school building has occurred. Indeed, at desegregation's peak, fewer than 50 percent of African Americans ever attended majority White schools.16The decline in the availability of desegregated schooling is accompanied by increasing alarm at the plight of African American children in de jure desegregated, but de facto segregated, schools in the United States. White students continue to score higher than Black students on tests of academic achievement at the elementary and secondary level, to be more involved in school extracurricular activities, and to attend schools with better trained teachers and more orderly environments. Black students are more likely to be disciplined, suspended, and placed in special education. The schools that they attend are less likely to be comfortable and secure; they are often taught by less experienced teachers.17Leading desegregation scholars correctly blame presidential and congressional politics and federal court judgments for the inequities that occur in the schooling of African American Their that occur policies aimed at achieving racial in desegregated Yet, this correctly the injustice inherent in the availability of it does not the important need to explore the kind of experiences African American students have within the school environments. For example, have that African American children their cultural to education and that White teachers often to and these In and that teachers need the cultural that them to with children of groups other than their These have the potential for in of desegregation as of White the in school that are by students of Yet, the of race, and of cultural to at the of scholars have begun to that desegregation will only both inequitable justice are and the of the is as important for of the to both and in desegregation is by the historical studies that are that the cultural and documented in studies in desegregated settings have an historical Southern African American segregated schools the of education and the ways in which teachers, and parents should these were in to the by the White For example, African American parents valued the and as educators who would educational strategies that would the of their studies indicate that some of these continue to be and valued by African American parents and teachers even they with White of the ways in which teachers, and students should Yet, the ways in which these the implementation of desegregation policies has to be the United States, South Africa has desegregation more As the in languages, the number of Black South Africans with White South Africans, and the political structure be different from the United States as to parallels to recent into desegregation implementation in South Africa similar to those in the United States. Although school can no be on the of they under the has not and schools primarily White and the as John the majority of White teachers have had no experience in with and have been to He that are not to do not to be it is to continue with is He also that Black students are being forced to into the of the schools and of the continuing existing between Blacks and Likewise, some of the Black and students have experienced in desegregated schools, cultural and that are consistent with these parallels in the of education and the similarities in desegregation a look at the history of the cultural traditions of which Blacks in both countries have emerged may be In this the that was and in desegregation influence of the cultural history of African American schooling in the segregated this to the extent to which another educational system may have similar school contexts. the segregated school settings have some of the that should have been in the United States 50 years to a more desegregation may be for South Africa's the implementation of David and in American Public A from the Harvard on School and no. 2 Nettles and Laura Perna, The African American Education Data Book, vol. High School Education (Fairfax, Va.: Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the College Fund/UNCF, Irvine, Black and School (New York: The Teachers of African American Children Siddle Walker and John Moral (New York: Teachers College Press, in "Black of Their and in In of African American Teachers and Their ed. Jackie Irvine (New York: pp. explore the that a similar may be in South Africa, see (n. 2 above), p. (n. 2 above), p. Peter Kallaway, and in South African Politics of Education," in (n. 3 above), p. pp. The of African Children in a School in Cape South Africa," Race, and Education 1, no. 1 (1998): explore the similarities in segregated schooling for African Americans and the apartheid schooling of Black South Africans, we a that relied on and Black South Africans currently in the United States completed an their apartheid schooling. South Africans three and had attended and secondary school in South Africa, the of the school and the type of schooling received The earliest high school in the the most recent school in the 1990s. have been in the United States from 1 to they completed used primarily from studies of the segregated schools of African Americans but also included to for the the of the in a that occurred after the of a on the segregated schooling in one school between and the end of the were to they as the similarities and differences between the two systems. The discussion was by the and on This 2 of South Africans were a that by were and, with the data an was to the of as they to in in the in this are that were in both data data on schooling on a of segregated schooling of African Americans in the "Valued Segregated (n. in the Schooling of Blacks and Black South of the and data for this several of similarity between the segregated schooling of African Americans and the apartheid schooling of Africans in South Africa. Although the of the parallels on the education was to the Bantu curriculum or after that curriculum was the were in the and the oral for the majority of the of the on the segregated schooling of African Americans in the United States or the with which teachers and children had to For example, a North Carolina school in for a of was the and most building for African American students in one in the White school had been for its another White school was given a of for Indeed, the as as on some White schools in the during this Even the of a White school was valued at in the of African American schools was inequities are throughout the South during this In North Carolina in the of school per was for White students and for African American As as the South had begun its building efforts as a result of increasing court attention to the of the of the but between African American and White education. African Americans these schools, they these inequities in the of facilities, and their the Black South Africans were of the inequalities inherent in their schooling. the need to often several in to attend schools that were poorly constructed and This of transportation the simple of attending school for some a we to the school. This was in the because of were from no and sometimes no the schools, the students also from the effects of and The inherent in the education was by one "The were there to provide from and but were not comfortable in or had with no were no

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.