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This essay will be unpacking my understanding of the South African education landscape, regarding justice (as equity and ubuntu) and equal education opportunities. Also evaluating the issues in the South African landscape and the signing of key concepts of Martha Nussbaum and Kevin Kumashiro for more just education in the South African educational environment, from the issues found on, will be mainly looking at social justice and anti-oppressive education. Justice as equity is the letter that focuses on the quality of education opportunities (Bailey, Barrow, Carr & McCarthy, 2010:405).
In South African education landscape issues, I will be focusing on violence and gangsterism and their impact on education. In brief, the assignment aims to consider the significance of the key concepts of Martha Nussbaum and Kevin Kumashiro for just education in SA.
Justice and equity define as the equal entrance to different opportunities and required resources (Bailey, Barrow, Carr & McCarthy, 2010:405). It also refers to the equal distribution of needed particulars that are needed in education such as electronic study material which South African lacks to provide.
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Justice as fairness points to the virtuous powers that people have, connected to their ability for a sense of justice and an idea of the good. Justice as equity isn't as it was almost minimizing all the disparities within the instructive framework of South Africa, but addressing the circumstance since they are distant from coming to the subject at hand. South African equality is seen as decency for Ubuntu.
That’s, in innate African culture, doing what is right and ethical. Conventional African culture is Ubuntu, without community there's no Ubuntu. After two decades of democracy in South Africa, there are as yet inconsistent education opportunities. Despite endeavors to update the system, class-and-race-connected imbalances are still especially reflected in the education system. Equal education opportunities are the process of fairness in which every person with a different social group gains certain results of opportunity. Furthermore, South Africa must give every individual an equal educational opportunity.
South African government is unfairly when addressing the issue of violence and gangsterism in schools. Gangsterism is having a critical negative effect on the education system and schools need to use all the instruments at their disposal to address the situation (Minister,2016). According to an EE social review of 244 Western Cape schools, understudies and instructors within the area experience and witness genuine wrongdoing and violence in schools all through the territory, as well as on the way to and from school, with women and LBGTQI learners enduring excessively (Van Der Merwe, 2017). Children presented with violence experience a much higher drop-out rate, lower academic performance, and more absenteeism. And they may set out in self-destructive or rash conduct or their interpersonal relations and school execution may endure. The majority of violent communities and schools are in high-poverty areas. The supreme discourse sanctions the belief that violence is expected from poor people because of their lifestyle. There is evidence in South Africa that there are enormous structural and organizational variations between previously white-only schools and in disadvantaged communities (Motala & Vally, 2016:88). These differences are likely to have far-reaching consequences on the levels and characteristics. Given the relationship between the community and schools, they can work together to ensure that the schools are secure spaces for teaching and learning. The practical steps that could be taken ensuring safety by the government to school, they can implement safety measures such as fencing, access control, metal detectors, and alarms in schools.
In this section, I will be explaining the three concepts of Martha Nussbaum, which are self-examination, a citizen of the world, and narrative imagination. Secondly, also explain the concept of Dr. Kevin Kumashiro which is the dynamics of oppression. Furthermore, then conclude with Rawl’s two principles of justice.
I will be evaluating three concepts of Martha Nussbaum, work with them to unpack and compare the significance of education. The three concepts that Nussbaum talks about are through education focusing on critical thinking, citizenship, and imaginative understanding.
Self-examination- critical self-examination simply means that life that undertake no belief as a custom, authoritative simply because it has been given down by tradition or become recognized through habit, a life that questions all beliefs, statement and argument, and accepts only those that survive reasons demand for stability and vindication (Nussbaum, 1997). Training this capacity requires developing the capacity to reason logically, to test what one reads or says for consistency of reasoning.
Citizen of the world- citizens who cultivate their capacity for effective democratic citizenship need, an ability to see themselves as not simply citizens of some local region or group, but also, and above all, as human beings to all other human beings of recognition and concern (Nussbaum, 1996).
Narrative imagination- this means the ability to think what might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be intelligent of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions, wishes, and desires that someone so placed might have (Nussbaum, 1996). Narrative imagination does not only need knowledge and logical reasoning but also love and compassion. Through imagination, we may achieve a kind of understanding of the experience of another that is very difficult to achieve in daily life (Nussbaum, 2006).
Dr. Kevin Kumashiro proposed a few concepts that could results in more just education in South Africa. Amongst them there is anti-oppressive education. However, there are many forms of oppression found in schools which include racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism. Kumashiro proposed two projects, one focuses on understanding the dynamics of oppression and the second one focuses on ways to work against it.
The dynamics of oppression- schools are spaces where the other is handled in injurious ways and sometimes the injurious effects from actions by peers and teachers who discriminate, harass, engage in physical and verbal violence and different forms of exclusion and isolation (Kumashiro, 2000). Schools prerogative certain groups and identities in society while marginalizing others by drawing on the language of “normalcy” and “common sense”. Stereotypes have tangible consequences and may cause differential treatment of learners by teachers (Kumashiro, 2000).
Ways to work against oppression- the role of the school in working against oppression must involve an appraisal of structural and dogmatic forces, but also a movement against its own connivance with oppression. Teachers could construct a tool where students contemplate their ability to implement the activities within the racialized teaching self-efficacy items or examine their racial fragility (Leonard, 2009). Teachers are plunged into a position in which they must prepare children and communities for participation in an anti-oppressive society (Ayers, 1998:1).
Nevertheless, the harm often results from inactions by the ideas of teachers Nussbaum and Kumashiro to address issues in the SA education environment to promote equality and equal education opportunities.
Martha Nussbaum says that the guiding thought behind her approach is 'one that lies at the heart of [ John ] Rawls ' project ... the idea of a citizen as a free and dignified human being' (SSJ 46) (A Primer of Modern Moral / Political Philosophy: John Rawls for a summary of John Rawls ' later philosophy, which significantly influenced Nussbaum).
The democratic definition of justice by John Rawls requires a determination by people to accept each other as free and equal in a social order constructed based on nation-states. The approach taken by Nussbaum is internationalist (SSJ 40). (So it seems to start from a somewhat stronger presumption that Rawls would look more like a metaphysical than a political one.
In conclusion, not only is the education issue structural; it is private as well. As a student living with other students both from socio-economic disadvantaged backgrounds and from affluent backgrounds, I believe there is a mission problem in schools. The world is filled with too many adults burying old dreams in their hearts ' graveyards – dreams that might have eradicated some of the social ills that plagued mankind for centuries. Too many adults live lives that are socially free from fear of failure. I think the development of a better world starts by knowing the meaning of learning and bringing out what is already in the individual – a vision that could ultimately transform the world if it is followed. In addition, education should also empower students to bring personal fulfillment to their ambitions to transform the world. Encouraging students to dream is therefore not only important to them as individuals, but also crucial to the development of South Africa, the African continent, and the wider world.
Gangsterism And Its Impact On Education. (2024, Feb 22). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/gangsterism-and-its-impact-on-education-essay
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