“Good schooling” in a race, gender, and class perspective: The reproduction of inequality at a former Model C school in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract After the first democratic elections in 1994 in South Africa, many Model C schools were opened for Black, Coloured and Indian learners. Model C schools that used to cater solely for White female learners had now entered the democratic period, and while the Cape Town Model C school in our study swiftly became populated with Black middle-class female learners, little was known of other transformations on the ground. In 2016, a protest by Black female learners quickly found favour on Twitter. They claimed that differentiated racialised treatment was directed at them and enshrined in the school’s Code of Conduct (COC). In order to investigate these claims, we employ an intersectional discourse analysis to investigate the 2015 COC prior to the protest, as well as the post-protest 2017 COC. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, cultural capital, symbolic violence and habitus, we endeavour to show how Black learners’ embodied capital and lack of cultural capital ensured their inability to be accommodated at the school. We investigate the outcomes of the COC in terms of empowerment, as measured by equitable school access, and the reproduction of inequality, indicated by the implementation of “school rules” directed at Black female learners whilst maintaining the status of the dominant (White) group of middle-class students. We conclude that analysis of the COC reveals an attempt at cultivating a particular White middle-class womanhood through the guise of “good schooling”.