|
When young South African children start reading books at school, how many see themselves in the pictures and text? How many are included in the stories? And how many feel totally left out? Are poor South African children sitting in rural schools and reading stories about affluent urban families? And do the pictures still show girls playing with dolls, boys with cars? The answer, to some extent, is yes, according to Carolyn McKinney, author of a new HSRC publication, Textbooks for Diverse Learners. During the apartheid past, school textbooks were specifically manipulated to promote social inequality and white supremacy. Now, 10 years into democracy, post-apartheid education has a critical role to play in the restructuring of South African society. This means, in part, that in a diverse country with a wide range of people (in terms of race, language, and social class), appropriate learner materials (such as textbooks) are crucial. The Constitution, Human Rights Commission and Department of Education are, on paper anyway, dedicated to promoting the values of non-racism and non-sexism. But to what extent are these values being reflected in classrooms, via the books children read? McKinney analyses a range of texts that are currently in use at several primary schools throughout South Africa. The study aims to explore to what extent these textbooks reinforce the vision of an equitable society. In particular, it asks whether the textbooks are appropriate; if they address the challenges of integration and diversity; and whether they enable teachers to do the same. The author focused on textbooks used in Grade 1 and Grade 7, the entry and exit points of primary education. For Grade 1, readers were selected as they are in many cases the first books that children encounter. In Grade 7, the focus is on Language and Natural Science textbooks. Several main areas were explored in terms of their representation in the textbooks: gender, race, rural or urban settings, social class, family settings and disability. Not only the texts were analysed, but also the covers and any illustrations in the books. The findings, which are broken down in detail in the published report, reveal that while racial diversity is being actively tackled on a textbook level, stereotyped views of boys and girls, an emphasis on middle-class settings and nuclear families, very little portrayal of poor or rural lifestyles and virtually no mention of disability are very often the norm. This, in a country where the majority of school-goers are rural and poor. Where the nuclear family has been decimated by factors including the migrant labour system and now HIV/AIDS. And where women are often the heads of households. Quite frankly, McKinney finds, diversity in school textbooks still has a way to go? McKinney makes several recommendations in her conclusion, including establishing guidelines for publishers of school textbooks, creating a set of national criteria for textbook selection, and providing guidelines for teachers working with materials where representation is problematic. Textbooks for diverse learners is part of a wider research project on school integration initiated by the HSRC. The project began with a colloquium in 2003, and the proceedings were published by the HSRC as Reflections on school integration, edited by Mokubung Nkomo, Carolyn McKinney and Linda Chisholm. As a follow-up, three additional research studies were commissioned, including one on learner support materials (LSMs) which resulted in this report. Textbooks for diverse learners offers a clear, concise analysis of the kind of learner materials being used in South African schools today. The author concludes that while textbooks have come a long way since Christian National Education, there is still a distance to go. Textbooks for Diverse Learners by Carolyn McKinney, and published by HSRC Press, is available from leading booksellers nationally, and from the online bookshop at www.hsrcpress.ac.za
|
