Between the Vision of Yesterday and the Reality of Today: Forging a Pedagogy of Possibility

In this article I discuss the vision of education for liberation during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The article focuses specifically on “People’s Education” and “Workers’ Education”. Instead of an instrumental role for education reduced solely to the labour market requirements of business, economic growth and international competitiveness, I argue that the purpose of education is much broader. Embedded in a rich tradition of an educational praxis based on social justice and democratic citizenship, the popular movements associated with people’s and workers’ education generated alternatives to apartheid’s legacy on education. In contemporary South Africa, this apartheid legacy is exacerbated by post-apartheid policies rooted in neoliberalism. While post-1994 education policies established the legislative framework for social justice, equity and adequate resources remain unattainable and elusive. In the face of the desultory state of schooling and the failures of neoliberalism, the article takes issue with the proffered solutions advocated by proponents of neoliberalism, including strident calls for the privatisation of education and resorting back to an apartheid-like disciplinary regime. In forging a pedagogy of possibility, social class analysis and effective community participation in education policy deliberations would need to be reinserted into the conversations about redress and education reform if the country is to overcome its inequalities and social cleavages. To this end, alternatives and possibilities raised during the struggle against apartheid are reiterated, re-examined and offered as prisms through which an alternative education can be practised