Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

How British imperialism shaped South Africa’s education

02 September 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba

Tracking how the government’s involvement in indigenous children’s education changed over time is the subject matter of Dr Rebecca Swartz’s new book, Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833-1880. Dr Swartz, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the University of the Free State’s International Studies Group, published this monograph four years after completing her PhD.

As a historian of British imperialism in the 19th century and focusing on the intersections between childhood, race, and humanitarianism, Dr Swartz’s research is imperative in understanding the history of the South African education system. Her study draws on materials from the Caribbean and Australia, as well South African archives.

Education as a tool to carve equality
The book is a comparative study which addresses how the government, researchers, missionaries and members of the public viewed the function of education in the 19th-century British Empire. The book tackles a period during which changing conceptions of childhood, the functions of education, responsibilities of government, and the reach of governing indigenous peoples intersected.

Underlying the question of education’s function “were anxieties regarding the status of indigenous people in newly colonised territories: the successful education of their children could show their potential for equality”, says Dr Swartz. While the colonial government and missionaries often agreed that some education should be given to indigenous children, they wanted to use this to further their own aims which included religious conversion and creating a labour force. Indigenous parents and children themselves were rarely consulted on what they wanted from schooling.

Schools and race

According to the historical archives sifted through by Swartz, substantial data was gathered which point to the fact that schools played a major role in the production and reproduction of racial differences in the colonies of settlement.

A shift in thinking took place between 1833 and 1880, both in Britain and the Empire. Education was increasingly seen as a government responsibility. With this new outlook childhood was approached as a time to make interventions into indigenous people’s lives. “This period also saw shifts in thinking about race,” says Dr Swartz. Remnants of that thinking can be seen in present-day South Africa.

Considering the bigger picture

When Dr Swartz began her research at the University of London in 2012, her main focus was to provide a broader understanding which transcended histories of either the development of ‘white’ schooling for settler children or Marxist histories of education of the apartheid period. “I was interested in finding out more about education for indigenous children during the 19th century, often in the early years of colonial settlement, an area that had received fairly little attention in the literature.”

Interested in a copy of the book?
Click here for a discount flyer for the book. Copies are also available on Amazon.

News Archive

Four modernised controlled environment cabinets inaugurated

2006-07-27

Photographed in a controlled environment cabinet were at the back from the left: Mr Adriaan Hugo (head of the UFS Electronics and Mechanisation Division), Prof Herman van Schalkwyk (Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS) and Prof Koos Terblans (lecturer at the UFS Department of Physics). In front is Mr Koos Uys (engineering consultant from Experto Designa who helped with the cooling systems of the cabinets).
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs

Different look for research in controlled circumstances at the UFS

Research in controlled circumstances at the University of the Free State (UFS) turned a new page today with the inauguration of four modernised controlled environment cabinets of the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences.

“The controlled environment cabinets, which are situated next to the glass houses on the eastern side of the Agriculture Building on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein, were installed in the early 1980’s. The cabinets, used for research purposes in controlled circumstances by the UFS for many years, became dysfunctional and needed to be repaired and put into use again,” said Prof Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.

“The cabinets are used by the agronomics, horticulture and soil science divisions of the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences to control factors such as the temperature, the intensity and quality of light, synthesis and humidity. This is done 24 hours a day, with hourly intervals,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

The cabinets are ideally suited to determine the joint and separate effects of these factors on the growth of plants. The adaptability of plants to climate can also be investigated under controlled circumstances. All of this leads to a better understanding of the growth and development process of plants, more specifically that of agricultural crops.

“The effect of these environmental factors on the effectiveness of insect killers such as fungus killers, insecticide and weed killers can also be investigated and can help to explain the damage that is sometimes experienced, or even prevent the damage if the research is timeously,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

A new cabinet can cost between R2-3 million, depending on the degree of sophistication. “Although controlled environment cabinets have been used for agricultural research for a long time, it has become costly to maintain them and even more impossible to purchase new ones,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

According to Prof Van Schalkwyk the cabinets were re-built by die UFS Electronics and Mechanisation Division. Some of the mechanisms were also replaced and computerised.

“The re-building and mechanisation of the cabinets were funded by the faculty and because the work was done by our own staff, an amount of about R1 million was saved. The maintenance costs will now be lower as the cabinets are specifically tailor made for our research needs,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

Where all monitoring was done manually in the past, the cabinets can now be controlled with a computer. This programme was designed by Prof Koos Terblans from the UFS Department of Physics.

According to Prof Van Schalkwyk the modernisation of the cabinets is part of the faculty’s larger strategy to get its instruments and apparatus up to world standards. “With this project we have proved that we can find a solution for a problem ourselves and that there are ways to get old apparatus functional again,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
26 July 2006

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept