Education in Apartheid South Africa: Propaganda with a Purpose
school, that the boycotts allowed children to ignore the State's message only to be compelled to accept the liberation struggle's world view wholesale (like being converted or "born again"). The message is different but the result is the same: individuals who have swallowed a belief system and adopted a lifestyle without thought or reason.
Of course, I don't wish to suggest that "the system" produces nothing but unthinking drones or clones (or both). I would argue that it tries to produce general conformity of expectations of perhaps wealth or success or freedom with the belief that one particular economic and political system works best to achieve those goals. It has a lot of success, yet we see resistance all over the place. One might argue that the widespread use of drugs in American schools is rebellion against the constant indoctrination against it. Widespread violence in South African townships during apartheid was definite resentment smoldering against the system. People do assert themselves; people do begin to see holes in their world-view. (Mid-life crises are examples of people recognizing that they're not fulfilled by the life and career and religion that they believed would.)
The liberation struggle in South Africa worked to subvert the system in place and replace it with a system that would work for all who lived in South Africa. To achieve this, they needed unity among the "masses." Hence, the political slogans and rallies, the boycotts that led to "conscientization." But how is that different from what the government under apartheid did? Indoctrination is indoctrination, regardless of the message.
Like me, the American journalist William Finnegan, who taught at a "coloured" school in Cape Town during 1980, struggled with the "group mentality" brought on by conscientization. He especially found it "distasteful" when it included ostracizing a person who hadn't conformed. Another teacher at the school argued that his problem is that he's a "cowboy" at heart, "a true American individualist....You think renegades should be allowed to go their own way. You think of them as 'nonconformists.' But we have group objectives we must accomplish. And we understand reactionaries to be the enemy" (Finnegan, 275).
In a way, that teacher is right-both that group unity is necessary to achieve certain goals for a nation and, at the same time, that there is a certain kind of American who will always argue that any kind of group identity is conformity and thus, bad.
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