Master of ceremony
Honourable guests
Members of the press
Ladies and gentlemen
Well before the liberation of this country and the election of a democratic government in 1994, political pressure groups and academics throughout our higher education landscape had been calling for curriculum transformation. These calls resonated not only the need to make university curricula more South African in its nature but also to provide our graduates with knowledge and skills that would ultimately make them contribute meaningfully to our overall development goals and actively participate in strengthening our democracy, as non-racial, non-sexist and inclusive, especially of the overwhelming majority of our people.
Before one can attempt to elaborate on the role and necessity of curriculum transformation, one first needs to establish some level of consensus, even if it is only hypothetically, on the meaning of curriculum and transformation. To begin with, one must distinguish between the formal and the hidden curriculum at any given institution. Curricula consist of far more than the formal or explicit combination of exit level outcomes, module objectives and assessment criteria as would typically be organised in the form of qualifications on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF).
A curriculum is therefore not merely a teaching and learning plan according to which lecture outcomes and schedules are being organised. From a critical theory point of view a curriculum consists of a body of knowledge and learning experiences that are politically and ideologically loaded – the so-called hidden curriculum. It is the very point in higher education – in any level of education – where power is produced, reproduced and contested. It is within a combination of the formal and hidden curricula of our schools and universities that we structure knowledge, symbols, norms and values, attitudes towards social structures, controls and culture.
In our curricula lies the very identity of our society. If we therefore want to change our society, address inequalities and develop ourselves into a just and healthy society, we need to change the very content of the vehicle through which we teach and develop our young people. Any social transformation lies embedded in curriculum transformation. We do however need to be cautious: change for the purpose or sake of change itself does not imply improvement. Such changes must be informed by what we seek to achieve, guided by our overall transformation goals.
Our post-school education system faces many severe challenges manifesting from our collective national socio-economical problems. As a developing country we are faced with one of the highest unemployment rates in the word. One out of every four able-bodied adults between the ages of 15 and 64 are not formally employed. The number of unemployed people increased by 227 000 between October 2010 and March 2011, while the number of work- seekers increased by 73 000.
Industries hardest hit by job losses are transport, construction and agriculture. Between the fourth quarter in 2010 and the first quarter in 2011, an alarming total of 486 000people became classified as ‘not economically active’. Of these 353 000 were discouraged work-seekers. Even more concerning is that approximately two million of the unemployed are potential first-time labour market entrants - young people having just completed their formal schooling or post-school qualification unable to find formal employment. The South African labour market is under strain for several reasons but I wish to highlight two in particular: technological change, and skills shortages.
Technological change has an adverse effect on macro unemployment due to the formal sector, and industry in particular, opting for cheaper and more reliable technology. Industry chooses to invest capital in more reliable productions methods as a substitute for investment in poorly skilled labour. It is therefore clear that we cannot change the content knowledge and skills included in revised and transformed curricula without keeping in mind that we are an African country, with explicit South African development needs as based on our unique development trajectory.
In addressing technological change and skills shortages we need to come up with innovative ways to transform curriculum content so that the very graduate outputs produced by post- school education institutions can be absorbed into our skills-starved labour market. Mindful of mounting pressure to address our national socio-economic problems, I call upon delegates at this lekgotla to remember the following: we cannot address crime, poverty and inequality without addressing unemployment. But at the same time we cannot expect industry and the formal sector to fit the bill for employment of under-skilled labour.
But let us pause for a moment on our joint understanding of curriculum transformation and consider our terminology. In the post-apartheid South African context transformation comes across as having two distinctive meanings, depending on one’s methodological point of departure. On the one hand transformation implies a process of reconstruction, by implication to reorganise, reform and restore, putting back together the component parts of something which was deconstructed.
"This is primarily a neo-liberal point of departure to transformation. On the other hand transformation refers to redress and to be more specific, addressing inequalities existing in a society, which in itself requires social transformation. It follows then that one cannot consider curriculum transformation in isolation from a multitude of other transformational issues, including that of social, political and economical transformation. Indeed, pressure to change curricula usually comes from three different areas, namely political, market related and epistemological forces. None of these three forces should be ignored.
For example, I am concerned that despite the clear failure of neo-liberal market ideology, as currently manifested by the current global economic crisis, which threatens to resurface strongly again, our curricula does not adequately interrogate these ideas, and also provide a variety of other ideas about the global development trajectory.
Curriculum transformation therefore becomes in itself a vehicle towards larger or wider transformational goals, therefore a means to an end more than an end in itself. Those calling for curriculum transformation usually have in mind profound and complete changes to existing curricula. Often these calls are heard within a timeframe of political revolutionary change or extreme social upheaval.
Calls for radical changes in curricula are therefore often received with great anxiety and resistance from academics and higher education institutions. Several reasons can be cited for this anxiety: traditional curricula is often held and revered as sacred, supposed to induce a sense of awe and humility in those entering the domain of higher learning for the first time; it contains the remnants of deep seated traditions and memories of those great and timeless philosophers and exponents of ideas and thought; traditional curricula embody sets of intellectual habits with which current academics are comfortable, having spent years mastering the methodologies and developing their own academic identities; curriculum transformation is therefore seen as antithetical to existing ideology as upheld at academic departmental, faculty and institutional level. In a word, there is resistance to curriculum transformation because it is scary.
Historically universities in South Africa, with particular reference to traditionally white Afrikaans institutions, were assumed by the state to be fundamentally part of the establishment and propagation of Afrikaner nationalist and apartheid ideologies. The support these institutions gave to the apartheid government directly influenced their epistemological and governance cultures.
Similarly, historically black universities were established with the intention of producing black academic elite which would stand in service of, or at the least be of use to the apartheid government, including civil service for the various bantustan administrations. Their very existence supported the continuation of the apartheid socio-political agenda. Contrary to expectations of the apartheid regime, these historically black universities became the breeding ground for massive oppositional student movements, ultimately culminating in the development of a hidden curriculum at these institutions. It was within these hidden curricula that norms and values relating to democracy, passive and active resistance, revolutionary change and equality were embedded.
To what extent are our tertiary and post-school education institutions, and more particularly, the curricula offered within these institutions, applied as vehicles of social change and transformation in our still deeply divided society? What are the considerations that must be taken into account at a lekgotla of this nature when considering, as you put it yourselves, the ontological relation between the character of society and the constitutive rules by which social and power relations play themselves out? You must indeed consider the influence of education as a primary means of socialisation, especially in a society where other more traditional socialisation institutions such as family and religion seems to be in decline.
I call upon you to take caution and not merely make value judgements on what to keep and what to reject within existing curricula, as challenging statements of knowledge far exceed mere rejection thereof. I also hope you will be more explicit about the assumptions that should inform curriculum changes and transformation.
One needs to be constantly aware of the primary driving forces behind calls for curriculum change, be they market-driven, political or epistemological. With an emphasis on the establishment of an integrated post-school education system, and the development of a skilled and capable workforce for our developing economy, curriculum changes advocated in the Human Resource Development Strategy of South Africa calls for a revised Further Education and Training (FET) curriculum that is purposefully aimed at improving quality, responsiveness and relevance of education and training at FET institutions. Strategic priority 3.2 of the HRD explicitly highlights the need to develop education outcomes that promote values which are consistent with good citizenship and the provisions of the South African Constitution.
In the National Skills Development Strategy III government outlines the importance of reviewing curriculum content in partnership with multiple providers, including industry, professional bodies and quality councils. It is essential that any curriculum transformation, change, or review process remains inclusive and transparent.
In relation to law in particular, and generally in many other professions, there is sometimes a tension between formal academic training and requirements of professional bodies. In tackling the issue of curriculum transformation it is also important that the relationship between the two is examined, as well as interrogation of requirements for professional registration and qualification. For example as things stand now in our country, in order to be articled this happens through private law firms. Why can we not have candidate attorneys in government for instance? What are the implications of this arrangement for curriculum and professional registration? In addition this arrangement contributes to the phenomenon of unemployed law graduates, simply because they cannot be absorbed by private law firms. Yet there is still a shortage of properly qualified legal practitioners in a variety of spheres in our society, not least in government itself at all levels.
However, for curriculum transformation to be successfully implemented requires of individual stakeholders throughout the post-school education system to act as adopters of potential innovations. As adopters of curriculum innovation you need to be knowledgeable about suggested innovations, persuaded as to its value, be able to evaluate whether to accept or challenge suggested innovation as well as be able to implement innovations.
Your ability to implement innovations may well depend on your position within an institute of higher learning. In the words of Thomas Samuel Kuhn “a paradigm shift sometimes has to await the death of the old professors”. It follows that no curriculum transformation or innovation can be successfully implemented if the epistemological value thereof is not imbedded in an institution’s strategic planning and culture.
Therefore the task of curriculum transformation must also involve a serious examination of institutional cultures and practices. For example to what extent are our institutions reproducing curricula that still reflects the apartheid order, as a result of inadequate institutional changes? Our own work in the department calls for what we do to be driven by some key transformation imperatives, including addressing social inequality, racial inequalities and prejudices, patriarchy, narrowing the urban/rural divide and addressing the many obstacles faced by the disabled. It is therefore important that we examine similar issues in relation to curriculum transformation in law faculties and schools.
For purposes of conclusion and review, let us consider the following definition of curriculum change and innovation, and then conclude with the implications hidden within the definition: “Curriculum innovation and change are efforts made by education authorities to change and adapt their aims and objectives of teaching and learning according to the values, cultures, philosophies as well the resources at their disposal”.
The definition clearly requires the active involvement and commitment from education authorities – individuals with the knowledge, passion, power and status in our institutions of post-school learning that have the authority and responsibility to suggest, evaluate and implement curriculum change and innovation. The definition also makes clear reference to the objectives of teaching and learning which must occur in accordance with values cultures and philosophies and resources at our disposal. This implies that our curriculum content must at all times be relevant to the South African context specifically and the African context generally, imbed in our students a commitment to life-long learning, stimulate within all of a hunger for integrated learning and continued efforts to improve the surroundings and resources supporting teaching and learning.
Related to the above, my department is working a variety of stakeholders in the higher education sector to work towards the adoption of learning and teaching charter for our universities.
I wish to congratulate you on this important initiative and wish you a successful conference.
I thank you.
Keynote address by the Honourable Dr Blade Nzimande, MP and Minister for Higher Education and Training at the Stakeholders' Lekgotla on Curriculum Transformation convened by the UNISA, College of Law
