Decolonizing gender in education : contextualizing gender in the grade 7 life orientation curriculm materials

Abstract

The increasing visibility of gender based violence in South Africa is one indicator of the insidious gender inequalities rampant in the country. We are socialised to internalise and reproduce unequal gendered power relations required to maintain a heteronormative patriarchal society. Taking cognisance of education as a tool for socialisation, this study aimed to engage critically with the discourse and representation of gender within seven textbooks for the subject Life Orientation for grade 7. The study made use of feminist critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy, Black feminist theory as well as decolonial theory to provide a thorough interrogation of the discourse of gender in the textbooks. The broad aim of this study was to contextualise gender in the Life Orientation textbooks for grade 7 by interrogating how the discourse on gender in the textbooks potentially socialises learners to act in complicity or to subvert a heteronormative patriarchal social order. This study revealed that the textbooks in question employ a variety of mechanisms to maintain a heteronormative patriarchal worldview, and each publication upheld these discourses to varying degrees. Some of the discourses used to sustain this perspective included the stereotypical gendered representations of boys and girls, queer invisibility, male autonomy versus a lack of female autonomy, failure to problematize rape culture and consistently portraying girls as the victims of male predators. This study further found that there was a significant lack of opportunities provided in the texts for critical interrogation of hegemonic discourses, as many of these discourses were presented as self-evident.