The Bantu Education

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According to Frescura (2003) missionaries from abroad settled in Southern Africa in the time frame between 1800 and 1925. These settlers envisioned to educate and civilise the people in the different communities using a religious approach to spread the gospel using formal education. Initially, education was received by slaves, but later their attention shifted to educating white people (Le Roux, 2011).

In the mission schools high quality education was provided to the non-whites to shape people in order for them to convert and be able to continue in their missionaries’ project. The missionary schools forced their graduates, who were privileged enough to afford it, to continue their tertiary education overseas. When the National Party came to power in 1948, they decided to shift their main focus towards the educating of white people, which resulted in non-whites receiving education in public schools, which lacked the necessary resources and structured facilities; teachers were not properly trained and the level of education was very poor (Metcalfe, 2013).

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 was enforced by the government, whilst the National Party was in power, and was the most unwelcomed law in the apartheid era. The Bantu education Act was a division law, where racial separation was legalised. This law enabled parts of the Apartheid system to be legalised (Anon., n.d). About all of the African schools were established and managed by missionaries with little financial help from the government. Various political activists, including Nelson Mandela, attended mission schools, yet Bantu Education brought an end to the independency these schools were enjoying up to then. Alternately, the government’s financial backing for black...

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...rmed part of the way he lived his life. A religious approach in education plays a very important role. Mandela respected different religions (South African History Online, 2014). His respect for different religions and so many other good qualities about Mandela, made him a respectable leader loved by most. To be taught about religion and to have a religious approach in education better prepares you to respect different religions, it teaches you to appreciate your own religion and it broadens your understanding regarding different people, who are practising different religions.

According to our constitution every person has the right to choose his or her own religion. Therefore to enforce religion onto learners contradicts the constitution. South Africa has a multicultural environment that will create difficulties in enforcing a specific religion onto learners.

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