The people's education movement in South Africa - a historical perspective

M.Ed.The task of this research report has been to map out the historical experience of the People's Education movement in South Africa from its inception in 1986 to its eventual national closure in March 1995. The People's Education movement under the banner of the NECC had been an endemic part of the education struggles experienced in South Africa, and had played a major role in informing the post-apartheid educational bureaucracy. Its historical role is therefore a significant and essential part of our educational experience. As Wolpe (1991: 77), has said, "the historical significance of People's Education lies in the fact that its conceptions not only challenged all previous conceptions of educational transformations in South Africa, but in so doing, placed on the agenda questions which must constitute the necessary point of departure for the formulation of new policies and strategies under new conditions". The first chapter of this dissertation has demonstrated that the concept of People's Education had been adopted by the oppressed peoples of South Africa in various forms from a very early stage and has therefore not been a new notion. The official launching of the People's Education movement encouraged extreme state repression but despite this, the movement managed to initiate the introduction up of alternative textbooks and the redirection the opposition movement towards a more reconstructive channel. The second chapter of this theses has attempted to trace the experience of the NECC between the years 1986-1990. It was found that the concept of People's Education captured the interests of academics who attempted to make sense of the movement by dissecting and analysing the various terms employed by People's Education. This theoretical analysis did not paralyse the movement in any way. Instead, it revitalised it and enhanced its value. As Carrim (1993) has stated, "Intellectual theorising has been an endemic part of the struggle nationally, as well as within the NECC, and at no time did it paralyse it, rather, it was enhanced and informed by these debates". Theory and practice always compliment each other. The intellectual scrutiny that the People's Education movement experienced was a natural stage in its growth. Without the necessary theoretical debates, many ideas in the People's Education movement would remain unworkable on a practical level. The final chapter of this paper has historisised the People's Education movement during the political transformative years of 1990-1995. It showed that during this time the official banner of People's Education, the NECC, played an instrumental role in the negotiating process and at the same time succeeded in extinguishing numerous crisis situations. Its decision to expand on a national level by incorporating affiliated educational organisations tended to complicate the smooth running of the organisation, and the eventual withdrawal of internationa