The invisible subject Implications of recontextualising sexual knowledge into padagogic communication on working classa learners in South Africa

Abstract

This article examines how South Africa’s current Life Orientation curriculum, in particular as it relates to sex and sexuality, risks failing the working class. The paper draws on current Department of Education official documents, interviews with Life Orientation teachers and a series of studies on youth, sex and sexual violence. A «rights-based individual» is clearly anticipated by the intended curriculum, which focuses on self-esteem, self-protection and empowerment. By requiring these life skills, which the curriculum has deemed essential to pupils’ understanding and handling of responsible sexual lives, the curriculum has, the paper shows, recontextualised sex and sexuality into a discourse far removed from working class pupils’ everyday experiences in their local pedagogic context.