40 Southern African Journal of Environmelltal Education, no. 19, 1999

TROUBLING 'FREEDOM': SILENCES IN POST-APARTHEID ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Noel Gough

The cultural history of South Africa in the transition from apartheid to democracy is a rich and complex story of the intricate inter-relations of education, (eco)politics, and social justice. As an Australian envi­ ronmental education researcher working frequently in South Africa during 1998-99, I have welcomed the opportunity to explore these relationships in the light of South Africa's new 'freedom'. However, the free­ dom that has accompanied the constitutional abolition of apartheid implies a liberty beyond the world of legislative politics. South African educators have increasingly had the liberty to reject not only the deter­ minisms of apartheid, but also to reject other social arrangements that supported its ideological machin­ eiy, such as patriarchy, sexism, ethnic nationalism, and class and language biases. Nevertheless, the liter­ ature of environmental education in South Africa remains for the most part silent on issues of race, class and gender. Thus, in this essay, I trouble the concept of 'freedom' in post-apartheid environmental educa­ tion by asking: what are South African environmental educators using their newly found freedom for?

WHAT TROUBLES A TRAVELLING TEXTWORKER?

During 1998 and 1999 I participated (with five is read, and our interpretation of our world is a other Australian academics) in an institutional function of our reading of texts". links project funded by the Australian federal gov­ ernment to support environmental education in I am thus interested in what we can learn by gen­ South African universities and colleges. I have erating our own stories of educational experience, specifically been involved in activities intended to by thinking about educational problems and issues enhance research capacity in environmental educa­ as stories and texts, and by subjecting all the sto­ tion, with particular reference to appropriate ries and texts we encounter in our work to various methodologies and superviSion practices. forms of narrative and textual analysis, critique Following VanMaanen's (1995:4) characterisation and deconstruction. As Derrida (1972:231) writes, of different dimensions of qualitative inquiry as deconstruction "has nothing to do with destruc­ 'fieldwork, headwork, and textwork', I think of tion" but, rather, involves "being alert to the impli­ myself chiefly as a 'textworker'. Although I have cations, to the historical sedimentation of the lan­ explained elsewhere (Gough, 1998b) what guage we use". Deconstruction is about exposing 'textwork' means to me, I will briefly recapitulate the structure of a discourse - showing how a dis­ some key aspects of my practice before focusing course works and what it includes and excludes. I more specifically on some difficulties of being a try to attend to gaps and silences in the stories I travelling textworker. I believe I need to do this in read and hear, and to identify what each story dis­ order to demonstrate how and why the questions I regards, marginalises, suppresses and/or treats as am asking about the silences of post-apartheid unimportant. environmental education are questions that arise for my practice as well as being questions that my A narrative perspective on inquiry draws attention South African colleagues might wish to address. to the embodied and socially embedded character of knowledge construction. Stories are fashioned I call myself a textworker because I privilege nar­ by somebody, somewhere, and this has particular rative and textuality in the ways I represent and significance for my practice as a travelling perform curriculum inquiry and environmental textworker, because stories may be told and education research. Narrative theory invites us to received differently when they are dislocated from think of all discourse as taking the form of a story the places in which their meanings are initially and poststructuralist theorising suggests that all shaped. Until relatively recently in human history, discourse takes the form of a text. My method­ the social activities through which distinctive ological (dis)position is to assume, as Stoicheff forms of knowledge are produced have for the (1991:95) puts it, that "the world is a text that most part been localised. The know ledges generat- Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999 41 ed by these activities have thus borne what Miller (1998) and Tyson (1998) and a rejoinder Harding (1994:304) calls the idiosyncratic 'cultur­ from Scheurich & Young (1998). Scheurich & al fingerprints' of the times and places in which Young (1997) outline four levels of racism: indi­ they were constructed. For example, the knowl­ vidual, institutional, societal, and civilisational. edge that the English word 'science' usually signi­ Racism in countries like the United States of fies was uniquely co-produced with industrial cap­ America (and, by implication, Australia) is primar­ italism in seventeenth century northwestern ily se~n as an individual phenomenon. That is, Europe. The internationalisation of what we can when my colleagues and I deny that we are racist now call 'modern Western science' was enabled by we mean that we, as individuals, do not conscious­ the colonisation of other places in which the con­ ly have a negative judgment of another person ditions of its formation (including its symbiotic based on their membership of a particular race. relationship with industrialisation) could be repro­ Scheurich & Young (1997:5) argue that "this indi­ duced. vidualised, conscious, moral or ethical commit­ ment to antiracism is a significant and meaningful The global reach of the United States of America individual and historical accomplishment", but and European imperialism has given Western that it "restricts our understanding of racism to an modes of knowledge production the appearance of individualised ethical arena" and is, therefore, "a universal truth and rationality, and they often are barrier to a broader, more comprehensive under­ assumed to lack the cultural fingerprints that seem standing of racism". This will not, of course, be much more conspicuous in 'indigenous' knowl­ news to South Africans, all of whom have person­ edge systems that have retained their ties to specif­ ally experienced in some way the effects of insti­ ic localities. But, as Shiva (1993:10) writes, the tutional and societal racism. In the United States of universal/local dichotomy is misplaced when America and Australia, educational researchers applied to Western and indigenous knowledge sys­ have (and in some cases still do) use labels such as tems, "because the western is a local tradition 'culturally deprived' or concepts such as 'at risk' which has been spread world wide through intel­ or 'dysfunctional' to describe non-white students, lectual colonisation". One sign of intellectual reflecting an institutionalised racism through these colonisation is what Hawthorne (1999: 121) calls entrenched (unmarked, invisible) organisational the 'unmarked category'. For example, in the symbols and knowledges. On a broader social informational domains of the Internet, United scale, entire societies may exhibit practices where States of America addresses are unmarked but one race is favoured or disadvantaged in relation to every other country is identified by the final term: another, as in South Africa under apartheid. au for Australia, sg for Singapore, za for South Societal racism persists in more subtle ways in Africa, and so on. Unmarked cultural categories, countries like the United States of America and such as whiteness in most Western countries, are Australia, where the dominant culture's social and especially troublesome for those of us who reside historical experiences (such as the white middle within them because they designate power and class view of 'success') are reproduced by the privilege. In discussing 'blackness' and 'white­ media, legal practices and government pro­ ness' in literary studies Morrison (1993:9-10) suc­ grammes, through a selective privileging of partic­ cinctly captures the dilemma we face: ular meanings of, say, a 'good leader' or a 'func­ To notice is to recognise an already discred­ tional family'. ited difference. To enforce its invisibility through silence is to allow the black body a Scheurich & Young (1997:7-8) argue that civilisa­ shadowless participation in the dominant tional racism exists at the deepest (and least con­ cultural body. scious) level because privileged attitudes towards and beliefs about the nature of reality and the con­ The invisibility of whiteness to those of us who are struction of knowledge are naturalised to the extent white is currently at the heart of a lively debate that they become everyday practical realities for about the issue of racism in educational research the entire population, even though these attitudes within one of the scholarly communities to which and beliefs have been constructed historically by I belong, namely the American Educational the dominant societal group. Said (1978) provides Research Association. Scheurich & Young (1997) a compelling example of civilisational racism in invited debate on this issue in one of the his depiction of how 'the West' constructed and Association's journals, Educational Researcher, legitimated its ideas about 'the Orient' not only to and further contributions include responses by Europeans but also to 'Orientals' themselves. 42 Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999 rI -E-p-is_re_m__ o-lo-g-ic_ru __ r_a_ci-.s-m __ an_·_s_es __ a_t_tlll_'_s_£_o-urt __ h_J_ev_e_l ____ d_e_p_lo_y_e_d_in __ S_o_u_th __ Af__ ri_c_a-.------~~- l when the sociru history of a particular group is }ij privileged over others and their epistemic view of I have written elsewhere about the effects of glob- •·•. ••.•.··•••.•• the world becomes dominant. Scheurich & Young alisation and internationruisation on Jocru know!- ·.~·.··.:.·. (1997:8) argue that "rul of the epistemologies cur- edge production (see Gough,1997; 1998a; 1999; in rently legitimated in (Euro-American] education press) and it will suffice here to note that I follow li.t arise exclusively out of the sociru history of the Turnbull (1993; 1997) in adopting a position that J dominant White race" and, thus, that tills unduly understands rul knowledge traditions as being spa- I~~-- restricts the range of possible epistemologies tiru in that they link people, sites and skills. 1 available to us, and makes non-dominant construe- Turnbull's approach is to recognise that all know!- I tions of knowledge suspect, pathological, sensa- edge systems (including Western science) are sets ·.•••.•.•.··•• bslill.&$···· tiona!, or simply illegitimate. of local practices so that it becomes possible to . 'decentre' them and develop a framework witllln I fmd much of Scheurich & Young's argument which different knowledge traditions can equitably very persuasive, ruthough I ruso see several diffi­ be compared rather than absorbed into an imperi- culties in taking up their position. For example, ruist archive. Donmoyer (1997:2) suggests that their view tends to 'essentialise the construct of race'. Mackwood Through a number of detailed case studies, (1999:1) raises some more awkward questions: Turnbull (1997) demonstrates that such achieve­ 'How would one bring on a charge of epistemo­ ments as gothic cathedral building, Polynesian Jogicru racism? Under what circumstances? How navigation, modern cartography, and modem can we can claim to know epistemological racism (Western) science are, in each case, better under­ when we read it?' Mackwood points out that while stood performatively - as diverse combinations of Scheurich & Young use Said's (1978) Orienta/ism social and technicru practices - than as results of as an example of reading epistemological racism, any internru epistemological features to which they do not address an important methodologicru 'universru' validity can be ascribed. The purpose question raised by his attempt to reveal how colo­ of Turnbull's emphasis on anruysing knowledge niru European el?istemology created 'the Orient' as systems comparatively in terms of spatiality and an object for cultural appropriation and domina­ performance is to find ways in which diverse tion. In contrast to Scheurich & Young's (1997:10) knowledge traditions can coexist rather than one call to "develop, and apply, 'new' race-based epis­ displacing others. He argues that nourishing such temologies", Said refuses to offer an alternative to diversity is dependent on the creation of 'a third Western representationru practices, because this space, an interstitial space' in which Jocru knowl­ would mean accepting 'the Orient' as a 'real' edge traditions can be "reframed, decentred and object rather than as a fiction created to convince the sociru organisation of trust can be negotiated". the West of its own supremacy. But, as Mackwood The production of such a space is, in Turnbull's (1999:2) argues, the difficulty with Said's (1997:560-1) view, 'crucially dependent' on "the approach is "the methodological question of how reinclusion of the performative side of knowl­ he purports to separate himself from the dominant edge": white racist epistemologies he claims [and Knowledge, in so far as it is portrayed as Scheurich & Young claim] are so pervasive". In essentially a form of representation, will other words, is there anywhere 'outside' of episte­ tend towards universru homogenous infor­ mologicru racism that we can stand to exaniine it? mation at the expense of locru knowledge These are troublesome questions for an anti-racist, traditions. If knowledge is recognised as anti-imperialist travelling textworker. My concern both representational and performative it is not that I might 'import' racist epistemologies will be possible to create a space in which into South Africa (there is ample evidence that knowledge traditions can be performed nations in periods of postcoloniru transition need together. no outside assistance or encouragement in taking up the epistemologies of their former oppressors, Turnbull is suspicious of importing and exporting sometimes with great enthusiasm) but, rather, that representations that are disconnected from the per­ the methodologies and critical strategies that I use formative work that was needed to generate them, to deconstruct the false claims of 'universru' and I share his suspicions. For example, when I knowledges in the more familiar settings of my began working as a teacher educator in Australia in work may produce further distortions when the early 1970's, much of the 'curriculum theory' Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999 43

we taught at that time was imported from the responsibilities that attend our freedom to make United States of America. It included an emphasis decisions and to take action in the particular cir­ on behavioural objectives for instruction and their cumstances of our work as educators. The recent classification by reference to Benjamin Bloom's history of South Africa has had a profound influ­ taxonomy of educational objectives. Many of my ence on the ways in which many people outside the colleagues and students were mystified by the country think about issues of freedom, justice, law hyper-rationality of planning curriculum by refer­ and responsibility. This has been in no small part ence to a register of behavioural objectives which, due to what Derrida (1987:1) calls the 'singularity' in retrospect, might be explained by our lack of a of Nelson Mandela and of the way in which he led 'performative history' of objectives-based curricu­ the struggle against apartheid. The extent of lum work. We had not experienced working with Australian public interest in South African politics objectives as United States of America teachers is indicated by a recent poll of readers of two of the had, first in the 1920's (in the wake of Bobbitt's nation's leading broadsheets, The Age (Melbourne) work) and, later, in the 1950's (under the influence and The Sydney Morning Herald. As reported in of the Tyler rationale). Nevertheless, many The Age (1999:9), 4657 readers responded to a Australian teacher educators accepted the Tyler 'Poll of the Century' questionnaire in which one of rationale, behavioural objectives, and Bloom's tax­ the questions was: 'What were the most important onomy as representations of a universal rationality. decisions made by governments in the world [dur­ They persevered in 'performing' them, despite ing this century]?' Leading this poll was 'forma­ being received with bemused incredulity by many tion of the United Nations', voted by 76% ofread­ students and classroom teachers, who interpreted ers, with 'ending apartheid' (72%) a close second. the teacher educators' persistence as further evi­ Only two other decisions received more than 40% dence of the chasm btween 'theory' and 'prac­ of readers' votes, namely, the armistice ending tice'. World War I (55%) and the ending of the Cold War (51%). Complementing their interest in the ending These considerations have led me to try to con­ of apartheid, readers voted that the second and ceive my work in South Africa in terms of per­ third most important decisions made by govern­ forming textwork rather than as representing ments in Australia were 'giving Aborigines the (Australian, European, North American) research right to vote' and 'ending the White Australia pol­ epistemologies and methodologies. That is, I have icy' (75% and 73% respectively); 'giving women tried to find ways in which our different knowl­ the right to vote' was ranked first in importance edge traditions can be performed together and (88% ). The popular interest in ending apartheid coexist rather than one displacing the other. I will was underscored by the difference between the leave it to others to judge how successful that strat­ results for readers at large and for 150 'opinion egy has been, but some small signs of success leaders' sampled by the newspapers. The 'leading include the growing and shared commitment of the Australians' ranked ending apartheid fourth in Australian and South African partners working on importance (49%). research methodologies and supervision to focus on 'learning from within', to base the text materi­ This populist interest has no doubt had some bear­ als we are developing on local stories and ing on my reading of the cultural history of South instances of textwork rather than developing South Africa in the transition from apartheid to democra­ African 'versions' or examples of imported cy as a rich exemplar of the complex interrelations research paradigms. of education, (eco )politics, and social justice. I thus welcomed the opportunity provided by the These signs of success notwithstanding, I am puz­ Australia-South Africa institutional links project to zled by a number of silences in the stories we are explore these relationships in the light of the compiling. These are the silences that impel me to nation's new freedom. However, I was aware that trouble 'freedom' in post-apartheid environmental the term 'New South Africa' was coined by F.W. education. de K!erk in his famous speech on 2 February 1990 (Saunders & Southey, 1998:xxv) and that this SILENCES IN POST-APARTHEID ENVI­ 'new' entity was far too diverse and contradictory RONMENTAL EDUCATION to be viewed as an unproblematic triumph of mul­ ticulturalism over racism. I share with South African colleagues an emanci­ patory interest in exploring the possibilities and For example, the erasure of the apartheid denomi- - 44 Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999 nations of African, Indian, Coloured and White calls "the ways in which patriarchal relations per­ means that multiculturalism is now being negotiat­ sist so viciously in South Africa, despite the many ed and contested both between and within these decades of schooling for girls". Silence about such arbitrarily marked categories. As Dolby's (1999, in issues cannot help us to develop ways of reading, press(a); in press(b)) ethnographic inquiries in representing and narrating difference without fear­ newly multiracial schools in Durban demonstrate, ing or fetishising it, or to practise forms of inquiry 'whiteness' after apartheid is taking on different that acknowledge and respond constructively to its hues and is being remade in multiple forms. Also, effects in mediating educational change. with the collapse of the most visible forms of insti­ tutionalised racism, other forms of oppression can When I look through the recent and current litera­ be seen more clearly, such as the extent of the dis­ ture on environmental education in southern crimination against and hostility to women in Africa I find few direct or indirect references to South Africa that Unterhalter (1999) finds in the difference - to the ways in which gender, sexuality, autobiographies of both black and white women. race, ethnicity, class, and even language consti­ Thus, 'freedom' for many South Africans now tutes curriculum, learning and teaching. For exam­ refers to something much more complex and prob­ ple, among the abstracts of papers presented at the lematic than that which accompanied the constitu­ 17th Annual Conference of the Environmental tional abolition of apartheid. Jolly & Attridge Education Association of Southern Africa (held at (1998:2) write of a 'predominantly potential' liber­ Rhodes University, Graharnstown, South Africa, ty beyond the world of legislative politics: 7-10 September 1999), I could find only two that South Africans during the period [of transi­ referred to these issues. Much of the current litera­ tion] have been and are increasingly at lib­ ture emphasises the programmatic and procedural erty to identify and to reject not only the aspects of environmental education: curriculum determinisms of apartheid, but also the development, curriculum frameworks, materials determinisms of those systems which, in and texts, processes of deliberation, course struc­ addition to racism, were implicated in and tures, resource development, outcomes and com­ supported the ideological machinery of petencies, assessment and so on. Clearly, this liter­ apartheid: patriarchy, sexism, homophobia, ature serves useful and necessary purposes but I class and language bias, ethnic nationalism, worry that the laudable intentions of the people and so on. who produce it may be subverted by what they omit. Systems of land ownership and use, and of the exploitation and distribution of natural resources, For example, Developing Curriculum Frameworks were similarly implicated in the operations of the Book 1: An Enabling Orientation, is a sourcebook apartheid state. The history of legalised racism is on environmental education for adult learners as deeply inscribed in South Africa's landscape as compiled by Lotz (1999) from the contributions it is in the nation's schools which, as Jansen and critiques provided by more than seventy par­ (1998b:6) asserts, "remain fractured along racial ticipants in workshops conducted under the aus­ and, increasingly, class lines". pices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Environmental Jolly & Attridge (1998) could be naming silences Education Programme. To the extent that this text in post-apartheid environmental education: "patri­ explicitly promotes, exemplifies and problematises archy, sexism, homophobia, class and language such orientations to curriculum work as 'participa­ bias, ethnic nationalism", to which we must still tion', 'responsiveness' and 'informed critical add racism, because dismantling one prominent action (praxis)', I believe that it could fairly claim edifice of societal racism has certainly not disman­ to represent 'world's best practice' in environmen­ tled other structures of racism from the individual tal education curriculum development. But I also to the epistemic. Some of these silences may well­ fear that this text in some ways lacks the courage be deliberate and maintained with good intentions. of its compiling author's, editors' and contribu­ For example, silence about issues of race may be tors' convictions insofar as it hesitates to identify welcome to South Africans who have experienced and name the differential constraints on the the violent expression of racial difference that was processes they valorise that arise from the contin­ endemic in the apartheid state. But I can see no uing effects of racism, patriarchy, sexism, class good reason to maintain silence about other issues, and language bias, and so on. For example, the such as sexism and what Unterhalter (1999:63) section on participatory learning in environmental Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999 45

education raises some 'challenging questions erwise seem to be core values of the text. The about participation' in regard to "issues of power account informs us that a "Karimojong man will which may arise in course and curriculum devel­ not tolerate democratic processes of decision mak­ opment"(Lotz, 1999:27). These questions are illus­ ing", but the text which precedes and follows this trated by reference to role differentiation: account does not remind the reader that democra­ issues of power ... tend to come to the fore­ cy and social justice are part of a "broader view of front when !P~ roles of course co-ordinators environment/s" valorised elsewhere in the book and course participants are seen to be 'sepa­ (p.50). I cannot accept that "responsiveness to cir­ rate', each with their own function. cumstances and context" means mere acquies­ cence to 'traditional' values. What are the options However, the text has nothing to say about power for environmental educators who find a differentials among participants that might arise Karimojong man's (or, indeed, a colleague's) from their marked identities as, say, male or "patriarchal and dictatorial rule" intolerable? female, black or white, Zulu or Xhosa. Curriculum deliberation processes cannot 'enable' participa­ Jansen (1998a:327) makes a somewhat similar tion if some participants are disabled by overt or point in criticising the instrumentalist focus of covert sexism, racism or 'othering' of any kind. Outcomes-based Education (OBE) which "side­ steps the important issue of values in the curricu- While I welcome the emphasis in Developing lum": Curriculum Frameworks Book 1 on "responsive­ Put more directly, OBE enables policy mak­ ness to circumstances and context" (Lotz, ers to avoid dealing with a central question 1999:15), one of the specific illustrations of the in the South African transition, namely what need for responsiveness that the text provides is a is education for? For example, there is little further example of the silences that trouble me. evidence In the report of the Learning Area The text quotes from an account of developing Committee for Human and Social Sciences training programs for the Karimojong communi­ that this question has been directly ties of North East Uganda to demonstrate "the addressed. One would expect in this importance and the complexity of responding to Committee that core values and commit­ participants In context" (Lotz, 1999:14). Part of ments would be [evident] ... Yet there is not this account includes the observation that: a single commitment to combatting racism the Karimojong ... exhibit a very patriarchal and sexism in society or developing the Pan­ and dictatorial rule over the family, other African citizen or on the role of dissent in a warriors and neighbours. A Karimojong democracy. Of the seventeen learning area man will not tolerate democratic processes outcomes identified, the closest approxima­ of decision making ... [we needed to] gather tion to a value statement is the phrase 'par­ experiences from the community to develop ticipate actively in promoting a sustainable, knowledge on how to work with people just and equitable society', a statement so (Lotz, 1999: 14). broad as to be meaningless, especially when this is unpacked in specific objectives such As far as I can tell, this is the only reference to as 'display constructive attitudes' or 'partic­ patriarchy in Developing Curriculum Frameworks ipate in debate and decision-making'. These Book 1. Readers may thus infer that patriarchy is statements could have been written for a 'problem' that might be encountered when work­ Hawaii or Buenos Aires or Western Nigeria. ing with traditional communities such as the They are bland and decontextualised global Karimojong. But patriarchy In southern Africa is statements which will make very little not confmed to traditional communities. Rather, as difference in a society emerging from Unterhalter (1999) demonstrates, patriarchal and apartheid and colonialism. sexist attitudes and practices are a running sore in contemporary South Africa. I have personally The silences to which I refer are not, of course, encountered environmental educators in southern peculiar to environmental education but have been Africa who openly defend patriarchy and tolerate endemic in South Africa's educational systems gender discrimination. before and after apartheid. For example, Unterhalter (1998:360) notes that, The account quoted above also troubles me while forces associated with the apartheid because it invites equivocation on what might oth- regime were blind to the gender divisions in 46 Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999

society, those in the democratic movement multiculturalism is a reconstructed form of noted some of their effects, but failed to racism itself. conceptualise redress or equity with regard to the integration of education and training Carrim (1998: 315) further notes that, in ways that took account of gendered social the proliferation of cultural categories is relations. applied mainly to 'blacks'. 'Whites' are con•;dered and projected "S being ethnically Unterhalter (1998:359) reviews the policy frame­ homogeneous . . . cultural differences are work for educational reform in South Africa highlighted only when applied to inter-racial between 1989 and 1996 and observes that "in not group encounters. noting gender in areas where it has a significant impact upon education and training, the nature of He suggests that many multicultural educational the social relations commented on is distorted." practices take on racist connotations when they high­ For example, policies on early childhood 'educare' light selectively when and among whom note that "families of more than half the children in cultural differences are emphasised, when the country are poor" and that "migrant labour and they construe people's identities in certain domestic (and other forms of) violence affect these ways and when they ignore the power children". But these same policies are dimensions to questions of racism itself silent on the ways in which both migrant (ibicl). labour and domestic violence have special and striking results for women that are dif­ Carrim (1998:301) thus argues that, ferent from those for men and hence have a on both the macro and micro level, ques­ differential impact upon children. tions of identity and difference are central in developing a school (and societal) environ­ Moreover, although one policy framework ment that is not only free from racism, but notes sexual harassment and discrimination other forms of discrimination too. against women teachers, this perception is not carried into the discussions of teacher The need for South African environmental educa­ training nor the policy proposals for teacher tors to recognise and explicitly address issues of management and development (Unterhalter, difference such as those raised by Jansen, 1998:359). Unterhalter and Carrim is emphasised by Chawla's (1999) report of implementing the Growing Up in Another form that the erasure of difference takes is Cities environmental education programme with detailed by Carrim (1998) in his study of attempts children in Johannesburg. The programme to desegregate schools in the Gauteng region. He involves children in drawing, talking and argues that structural initiatives at the macro level writing about how they use and perceive may desegregate educational institutions but they their environment, neighbourhood tours and do not deracialise them, "because they do not other activities, and discussions about prior­ address the complexities and specificities of 'race' ities for improving local environmental and racism [at] the micro level of the school, as quality. experienced by people themselves". Carrim (1998:314) points out that the 'multiculturalist' Chawla provides some results of activities with practices in Gauteng schools "have tended to por­ two groups of children, one of which carne from a tray people of different racial groups as being cul­ squatter area on the edge of the inner city. In the turally different, implying a shift from 'race' to course of the project, the squatter families were ethnicity": evicted and resettled in an area of empty veld This is particularly evident in the fact that forty-four kilometres outside the city centre. Seven cultural diversity within racialised groups is months after resettlement, seven children were denied consistently. It is easier to talk of a asked to portray themselves in drawings as they Zulu as being culturally different, as saw themselves prior to and after working on opposed to an Italian, in 'white' school set­ Growing Up in Cities. Chawla (1999) writes: tings, for example. This denial of cultural As had been expected, all of the children differences within racialised groupings used the relocation of their settlement as the lends credence to the claim that this type of dividing line in their drawn representations Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999 41

of self. The two boys depicted better condi­ ly inaccessible; to play with the future on tions at the new site (more room or less vio­ that needlepoint where it meets past and pre­ lence), and linked these new conditions to sent; and to be willing to risk everything in improvements brought about by the project the leaping flame of the word as it turns into on their behalf. The drawings of the five world. girls, however, depicted no personal capaci­ ties to explore and use the new environment, What inhibitions of apartheid remain that prevent but in most cases contrasted positive images us from naming racism, sexism and class biases as of their previous home and activities with continuing constituents of our work? What are the different levels of personal disruption at the possibilities for constructing anti-racist and class­ new site. and gender-inclusive environmental education in South Africa? What research do we need to under­ While several interpretations of these findings are take to inform such curricula? How should we con­ possible, the evidence of gender differences in the duct such research? These are difficult questions, children's readings of their environments is very but I cannot even hear them being asked at present. persuasive, yet I have seen and heard little in the My purpose in this essay is to suggest that we stories and texts of environmental education should try to move them from the silent margins research in South Africa that attends to the impli­ and suppressed whispers of our work into the noisy cations of such differences. Chawla hints at other spaces of our dialogues and conversations. What is registers of difference but does not pursue them in freedom for in the 'new' South Africa if it does not the brief text from which I am quoting. For exam­ include attending to the differences that enable and ple, her report notes that discussions with the reset­ constrain the ways in which all of its citizens can tled children were in the language they preferred deploy that freedom? ("mostly English, but about 25% in Zulu") and that the project base for the squatter camp children had ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS been an Islamic neighbourhood centre. Given that the purposes of the research were concerned with An earlier version of this essay was presented at 'measurable beneficial psychological effects' in Growing Together, the 17th Annual Conference of regard to 'self-esteem, locus of control and self­ the Environmental Education Association of efficacy', I am a little surprised that aspects of cul­ Southern Africa, Rhodes University, ture that are clearly constitutive of personal identi­ Grahamstown, South Africa, 7-10 September ty (such as language) appear not to have been 1999. I am indebted to the organisers of this con­ examined. ference, and to the Faculty of Education at Rhodes University, for supporting my attendance. I also Brink (1998:14) suggests that 'the writer's prima­ wish to thank Gill Boltt, Annette Gough, Eureta ry engagement' is 'to interrogate silence', that "all Janse van Rensburg, Lesley Le Grange, Tsepo writing demonstrates the tension between the spo­ Mokuku, Edgar Neluvhalani, Rob O'Donoghue, ken and the unspoken, the sayable and the Chris Reddy, Danie Schreuder, Kathy Stiles and an unsayable". Brink argues that the idea of 'interro­ anonymous reviewer for their constructive com­ gating silence' suggests new possibilities for South ments on the earlier version. I must emphasise, African writers since the dismantling of apartheid, however, that the positions I take here are entirely and emphasises that the kind of interrogation he my responsibility and are not necessarily shared by has in mind 'is not a power-play but a dialogue'. I my colleagues. am concerned that we (and I deliberately include myself in this 'we') are leaving too much unspo­ REFERENCES ken and unsaid in the stories and texts of environ­ mental education research in South Africa. Brink's Brink, A. 1998. Interrogating silence: New possi­ (1998:27) summation of the regenerative powers bilities faced by South African literature. In D. of South African literature thus provides a similar Attridge and R. Jolly (Eds), Writing South Africa: imperative for textworkers in environmental edu­ Literature, Apartheid and Democracy, 1970-1995. cation research: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. not simply to escape from the inhibitions of apartheid but to construct and deconstruct Carrim, N. 1998. Anti-racism and the 'new' new possibilities; to activate the imagination South African educational order. Cambridge in its exploration of those silences previous- Journal of Education, 28(3), 301-320. 48 Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, no. 19, 1999

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