Dimensions of change in white South African education, 1990-1992

Abstract

Changes introduced in white schools in South Africa in September 1990 after decades of authoritarian, racially segregated and unequal education had the potential to start a process of fundamental educational reform. Diffusion of the innovation started in the southwestern coastal areas of South Africa and spread along the south and eastern coasts before turning inland to the deep interior. The diffusion had a hierarchical spatial spread based on the sizes of settlements. Socially, it was influenced by language, political ethos, population density and perceived racial distances. Although considered to be short-sighted, self-serving adaptive measures, these changes have re-situated white education in a position where its socio-economic exclusiveness is now defined in terms of class rather than race.