School Tourism in Southern Africa

Abstract

Philanthropic funding is commonplace in schools in Southern Africa and is shaped by philanthropic offerings through philanthropic foundations or for-profit low-fee private school chains. In particular, some schools are funded by tourism ventures. Tourism in schools takes two main forms: the introduction of tourist funds into schooling, and the introduction of tourists themselves to schooling. Tourist funds in schooling arise from a number of different forms of tourism such as community-based tourism, sustainable tourism, developmentourism, and philanthropic tourism. These terms encompass various forms of tourism in which funding of a community is a byproduct of tourism. In terms of tourists in schools, there are various forms of such tourism including volunteer tourism, service-learning tourism, or “slum” reality tourism. School-based tourism has developed as a version of tourism which incorporates elements of all these forms of tourism. One form of school-based tourism is the school tour. In the school tour, tourists are guided by children to visit and enter every classroom in the school and are permitted to engage with students in a range of ways, from taking photographs of the children, classrooms, and grounds to helping with schoolwork or teaching an impromptu lesson. While school-based tourism can be viewed as a valuable economic undertaking for schools, for example, through funding of capital works and teacher salaries, such tourism can also create contradictions and dilemmas for the teachers and children.