Change the world

17/07/2020

Right now South Africa needs to start reimagining our schools as places of hope and opportunity, not only for our children but for the residents of the area in which they are situated.

Right now South Africa needs to start reimagining our schools as places of hope and opportunity, not only for our children but for the residents of the area in which they are situated.   

It’s known that 75% of our schools are not receiving the same quality education as that of learners in middle-class areas. The effect of Covid-19 has amplified the structural inequalities in our society. 

We need to use this opportunity to move away from the notion of getting schools “back to the way they were”, and for the reimagination to form part of the broader social justice discourse and the need for redress in society.

Over the past 10 years, the Centre for the Community School (CCS) has been working to understand the key elements of a contextually responsive education system. We have been collaborating on a reimagination through what we call “the community school” in a number of schools in the greater Nelson Mandela Bay metro and rural Eastern Cape.

Read more at: https://mg.co.za/coronavirus-essentials/2020-07-16-a-reimagined-school-is-embedded-in-its-community/

This article appeared in the Mail & Guardian Coronavirus Opinion on 16 July 2020 written by Dr Bruce Damons, Director of the Centre for the Community School in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University.

Contact information
Dr Bruce Damons
Director: Engagement Office
Tel: 0415043541
Bruce.Damons@mandela.ac.za