Danger and disease in sex education : the saturation of ‘adolescence’ with colonialist assumptions
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: Article , text
- Identifier: vital:6252 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007870
- Description: The United Nations Development Programme’s Millennium project argues for the importance of sexual and reproductive health in the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals. Sex education programmes, aimed principally at the youth, are thus emphasised and are in line with the specific Millennium Development Goals of reducing the incidence of HIV and improving maternal health. In this paper I analyse recent South African sex education and Life Orientation (a learning area containing sex education) manuals. Danger and disease feature as guiding metaphors for these manuals, with early reproduction and abortion being depicted as wholly deleterious and non-normative relationships leading to disease. I argue, firstly, that these renditions ignore well-designed comparative research that calls into questions the easy assumption of negative consequences accompanying ‘teenage pregnancy’ and abortion, and, secondly, that the persistence of danger and disease in sex education programmes is premised on a discourse of ‘adolescence’. ‘Adolescence’ as a concept is always already saturated with the colonialist foundation of phylogeny re-capitulating ontogeny. Individual development is interweaved with collective development with the threat of degeneration implied in both. This interweaving allows for the instrumentalist goal of sex education in which social changes are sought through changing individuals’ sexual attitudes and behaviour.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: Article , text
- Identifier: vital:6252 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007870
- Description: The United Nations Development Programme’s Millennium project argues for the importance of sexual and reproductive health in the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals. Sex education programmes, aimed principally at the youth, are thus emphasised and are in line with the specific Millennium Development Goals of reducing the incidence of HIV and improving maternal health. In this paper I analyse recent South African sex education and Life Orientation (a learning area containing sex education) manuals. Danger and disease feature as guiding metaphors for these manuals, with early reproduction and abortion being depicted as wholly deleterious and non-normative relationships leading to disease. I argue, firstly, that these renditions ignore well-designed comparative research that calls into questions the easy assumption of negative consequences accompanying ‘teenage pregnancy’ and abortion, and, secondly, that the persistence of danger and disease in sex education programmes is premised on a discourse of ‘adolescence’. ‘Adolescence’ as a concept is always already saturated with the colonialist foundation of phylogeny re-capitulating ontogeny. Individual development is interweaved with collective development with the threat of degeneration implied in both. This interweaving allows for the instrumentalist goal of sex education in which social changes are sought through changing individuals’ sexual attitudes and behaviour.
- Full Text:
Language shift in Grahamstown: A case study of selected Xhosa-speakers
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158106 , vital:40149 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1515/ijsl.2000.146.87
- Description: A number of scholars (Fasold 1984; Aitchison 1991; Denison 1977; Dorian 1980; Gal 1979) have examined the issue of language maintenance and shift, trying to discover why certain languages (or language variants) sometimes replace each other among some Speakers, particularly in certain domains of linguistic behaviour under some conditions or intergroup contact. This article provides an overview of the main factors that have been identified as playing an important role in influencing language shift and then reports on the relative importance of these factors in a survey that examined the experiences and attitudes of Xhosa-speaking parents who have recently chosen to send their children to English-medium schools in Grahamstown (Eastern Cape, South Africa). The research was carried out during 1998, and the project was a multifaceted quantitative and qualitative longitudinal study involving responses to a postal questionnaire sent to all non-English parents at English-medium schools in the town, and follow-up Interviews with 26 parents.
- Full Text:
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158106 , vital:40149 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1515/ijsl.2000.146.87
- Description: A number of scholars (Fasold 1984; Aitchison 1991; Denison 1977; Dorian 1980; Gal 1979) have examined the issue of language maintenance and shift, trying to discover why certain languages (or language variants) sometimes replace each other among some Speakers, particularly in certain domains of linguistic behaviour under some conditions or intergroup contact. This article provides an overview of the main factors that have been identified as playing an important role in influencing language shift and then reports on the relative importance of these factors in a survey that examined the experiences and attitudes of Xhosa-speaking parents who have recently chosen to send their children to English-medium schools in Grahamstown (Eastern Cape, South Africa). The research was carried out during 1998, and the project was a multifaceted quantitative and qualitative longitudinal study involving responses to a postal questionnaire sent to all non-English parents at English-medium schools in the town, and follow-up Interviews with 26 parents.
- Full Text:
Regional transport challenges within the Southern African Development Community and their implications for economic integration and development
- Authors: Mutambara, Tsitsi E
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/477831 , vital:78128 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589000903399488
- Description: The Southern African Development Community (SADC) seeks to deepen economic integration among its members through the SADC free trade area that came into effect in January 2008. The thrust for a progressive reduction of tariff and no-tariff barriers, which the market integration model emphasises, has serious im-plications for the impact of transport and communication systems on economic integration and development within SADC. Transport and communications systems have an important bear-ing on economic integration and development because they can be significant non-tariff barriers. The SADC Protocol on Transport, Communications and Meteorology is the instrument through which transport and communications constraints are to be ad-dressed. Through this protocol, some institutions have been es-tablished and others proposed to ensure that projects designed to deepen economic integration and development are implemented effectively.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mutambara, Tsitsi E
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/477831 , vital:78128 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589000903399488
- Description: The Southern African Development Community (SADC) seeks to deepen economic integration among its members through the SADC free trade area that came into effect in January 2008. The thrust for a progressive reduction of tariff and no-tariff barriers, which the market integration model emphasises, has serious im-plications for the impact of transport and communication systems on economic integration and development within SADC. Transport and communications systems have an important bear-ing on economic integration and development because they can be significant non-tariff barriers. The SADC Protocol on Transport, Communications and Meteorology is the instrument through which transport and communications constraints are to be ad-dressed. Through this protocol, some institutions have been es-tablished and others proposed to ensure that projects designed to deepen economic integration and development are implemented effectively.
- Full Text:
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