Curriculum reform ‘key to a just society’

SOUTH Africa has come a long way, but if education and the curriculums are not transformed, the dream of a non-racial and just society will remain elusive.

This was the argument by NMMU educationist Professor Sylvan Blignaut as he delivered his inaugural professorial lecture on Monday.

Blignaut, who was inducted into the university’s highest academic echelon, delivered his speech, titled “Two decades of Curriculum Transformation: What have we learnt and Where do we go from here?”, to a packed North Campus Conference Centre Auditorium.

He spoke of attempts at curriculum reform in democratic South Africa – from Curriculum 2005 to the current CAPS.

“As teachers and academics, we have not done enough to prepare the young for the changing world in which they will be living,” Blignaut said.

“Before we can consider future curriculums for both the schooling system and higher education, we have to ask what kind of society we want to build as there is a direct relationship between curriculum and the desired society.”

South Africa’s higher education sector was grappling with calls for a decolonised curriculum in which all knowledge systems and traditions were acknowledged.

“Through socialisation, the young are inducted into the traditions of the existing society, to fit into existing social orders,” he said.

“Universities and schools exert considerable influence in shaping society.”

Blignaut said universities and schools were best placed to deal with racism, power, privilege, gender and patriarchy, as they were historically created for teaching and learning.

He is a senior academic within the university’s faculty of education and the first of numerous professors to deliver inaugural addresses this year.