Towards Human Rights in South African Schools: An agenda for research and practice

In South Africa, since 1994, there has been a process of statutory deracialisation. Analysis reveals a critical absence of substantive education policy or specific programmes to deal with 'race', equity and human rights, particularly to inform practice and relationships at school level. How, then, does the average teacher, principal and school governing body respond when faced with issues of diversity and human rights in the classroom, the playground or the school community? The article develops a taxonomy of four kinds of situations in which 'race' and other grounds for discrimination such as language, ethnicity, culture and religion, become the focus of school-level contestation. It conceptually maps the kinds of response and discourses schools have developed to engage with the policy discourse of desegregation and human rights. It thus establishes an agenda for research that may help to inform anti-discrimination policy and programmes.