What the U.S. Could Learn from South Africa about Education and Social Justice - Sue Books & Thembi Ndlalane

Oct 15, 2026

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Education in South Africa and the United States is framed as the site of social and political struggle, with apartheid’s legacy shaping schooling and reform. Through talks with 29 teachers across diverse South African schools, the study documents support for national transformation alongside anxieties over curriculum implementation for White teachers and frustration over slow redress for Black teachers. Teachers emphasize urgent unmet needs, while the paper draws lessons for U.S. education and social justice reform.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Teachers’ perspectives on reform

Historical context: schooling in South Africa

Constitutional commitments and policy reforms

Methodology and theoretical foundations

What the U.S. Could Learn from South Africa about Education and Social Justice By Sue Books & Thembi Ndlalane Sue Books is a professor in the Department of Secondary Education at the State University of New York at New Paltz, New Platz, New York. Thembi Ndlalane is a professor at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Educational policy and practice has resided and continues to reside at the vortex of social and political strife in South Africa, as in the United States. The political foundations of education in South Africa were perhaps never more evident than in 1976 when students in Soweto rebelled against the National Party’s declaration that Afrikaans would become the language of instruction for mathematics and social studies in Black high schools. That rebellion helped to undermine the apartheid regime, which finally lostpower to theAfrican National Congress (ANC) 18 years later. One of the Nationalist government’s greatest failures, education, arguably is now one of the ANC’s greatest challenges (van Schalkwyk, 1998) . During Sue’s six-month stay in Pretoria in the summer and fall of 2007, she and Thembi talked with 29 teachers working in a range of demographically and economically diverse schools across South Africa.1 Asked about their aims and objectives as educators, the teachers overall expressed support for the momentous transformation in which South Africa is engaged. Yet this desire was tempered by anxieties among many of the White teachers about the implementation of a national curriculum and teaching philosophy that many seemingly do not fully understand or like, and by frustrations among many of the Black teachers with the slow pace of redress and broader social change. Almost all of the Black teachers shared cries for concrete help: Schools need more resources, classes are overcrowded, basic school infrastructure is missing, startling numbers of children have lost their parents to HIV and AIDS and are now caring for themselves and their siblings, primary school students are targeted by drug dealers, and so on. As a teacher in a rural school in the province of Mpumalanga put it,“We don’t feel the change. We now have democracy, but we’re still in the same schools. We still have the same families, the same parents who are still poor.” Although the sample of teachers is clearly too small to reach definitive conclusions, the teachers’comments suggest a philosophical divide within the education profession that has important implications—both as a “report card” on the educational reforms that have been made in South Africa, especially with respect to funding, and with respect to educational reform in other countries, including the U.S. Holding up South Africa as a mirror, we see more clearly a schism within the profession of education in the U.S.—a schism born of differential access to the“culture of power” anda“silenced dialog” about its educational significance (Delpit, 1988) . Although school poverty and inequities among schools in the U.S. pale in comparison to conditions in South Africa, the two nations have much in common, including histories of state-sanctioned segregation in schooling as well as halting effortstorefashion those systems without undermining structures of advantage (Ball, 2006; Russo, Beckmann, & Jansen, 2005). Our purpose in this article, however, isnot to compare U.S. and South African teachers’views of educational reform, but rather to consider the broader significance of the SouthAfrican teachers’experience of educational reform—specifically, lessons U.S. policymakers might learn from these teachers about education and social justice. As a context for exploration of the teachers’comments about their aims as educators, the sections that follow offer a brief overview of the political and historical circumstances of schooling in South Africa and a short discussion of the theoretical foundations and methodology of the study. The article concludes with discussion of t

FAQs

What conflict shaped education policy in South Africa and is described as connected to education and social justice?

Educational policy and practice are depicted as being at the center of social and political struggle, including the 1976 Soweto student rebellion against language-of-instruction policy for Black schools.

What concerns do teachers express about South Africa’s curriculum and reform implementation?

White teachers express anxiety about implementing a national curriculum and teaching philosophy they do not fully understand or like, while Black teachers report frustration with the slow pace of redress and broader social change.

What educational needs do many teachers say must be addressed concretely?

Teachers call for more resources, smaller classes, improved infrastructure, and note severe impacts such as children caring for themselves and siblings due to HIV and AIDS and risks faced by primary students.

Oct 15, 2026

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