Validating Community Cultural Wealth: Toward Sustainable Empowering Learning Environments

Abstract

There was a man who was seated at the back of one of the relatively large auditoriums at the University of the Free State. It was late, around nine o’clock on the night of September 29, 2010. The hall was packed to capacity with academics from a wide spectrum of theoretical positions in South Africa and the world over. We were attending the annual conference of the Third Education Research Colloquium, a gathering that was convened to discuss emerging issues of social justice in education. There were also a few individuals representing organizations from civil society. We were about to conclude our three days of deliberations as members of the Anti-Racism Network in Higher Education as well as the international Apartheid Archives Projects, when a man at the back of the hall asked this gathering fundamental questions that stunned us all. The questions were simple and provocative. He said:

For the past three days, with due respect my professors, you have been telling many stories, mainly from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. You have been analyzing all these big research ideas with the aim of fast tracking and facilitating national reconciliation, unity, social cohesion, and all. However, I still do not know what to do, because I am now 52 years old without any formal schooling or qualification, and I am unemployed. I live on my mother’s pension grant together with eight other members of our family. When I was of a school-going age, our farm school was closed down by the farm owner, who argued that there was no need for the education of kaffirs [a very rude and derogatory reference to people of African descent during the apartheid era, meaning an infidel without culture or manners], as she would always provide work and provisioning [sic] of a sack of maize meal, milk, and an occasional meat. Now, here I am with the whole of my youth, way past me. Now, how will these big ideas assist me? How will national reconciliation and that entire movement make up for all that I have lost? In fact, even the future of my children is still bleak, as I am not able to provide them with a decent education or any means of meaningful livelihood. It seems that the future of my generation is lost and more so of all of my subsequent generations.