Post-Schooling People's Education

ABSTRACT

The eruption of the People's Education movement in the mid-1980s marked a significant shift in thinking about post-school education in South Africa. While much of People's Education focused on the schooling sector, the movement always included a far broader conception of education, which included both children and adults, with an emphasis on understanding society rather than ‘trapping’ people into an existing system. So, while literacy was seen as a critical mechanism to redress the system of Bantu Education, and for those excluded from the formal system, this was part of a broader process of ‘reading the world’ in Freirean terms; similarly, worker education was to be much more than learning skills for the job. A formal, state-supported system would operate in tandem with community non-formal education run by, for example, churches, women's groups, and trade unions. Many writers have argued that these radical ideas were fairly quickly abandoned during and after the political transition. During the 1990s, ABET, as a much more formal discourse, replaced the non-formal ‘literacy’ discourse of the 1980s, and adult education in a more general sense largely disappeared. Similarly, worker education became increasingly tied to neoliberal thinking. Very recently, new post-schooling policy has been developed, and has been met with conflicting analyses. The article considers this historical trajectory using Gramsci's ‘war of position’ as a tool of analysis. It argues that there is an imperative for seriously and urgently considering a radical alternative to post-schooling education – post-schooling people's education – which comes from two interlocking circumstances: the policy proposals and policy process currently underway in South Africa, and the current crisis of capital both locally and globally. Both provide opportunities for change.

Keywords:

• People's Education
• Gramsci
• war of position
• hegemony
• South African transition