Initial challenges when introducing business subjects into the South African school curriculum

Abstract

Following the country's first democratic election in 1994 the government introduced a new school curriculum as part of its restructuring process. Entrepreneurship and a range of related business subjects were included in one of the designated 'learning areas', called Economic and Management Sciences. However, during subsequent revisions it was removed from two of the country's three education bands and the philosophy underlying it (outcomes based education (QBE)) was rejected. The proposed paper reflects on the socio-historical context for what was branded as an outright failure of the South African government's choice of education system. The proposed paper provides a framework for viewing the difficulties of implementing a new and contended subject into the school curriculum. The proposed paper focusses on the introduction of one of the subjects related to entrepreneurship, namely Accounting, at schools in an area of the Western Cape Province which had been systematically impoverished, oppressed and neglected under white minority rule. The difficulties of implementing a contended curriculum and an enlightened style of free-thinking, open-questioning and constructivist education in a community trained to be obedient for decades, are mapped and comprehended within social, fiscal and ultimately broad political emphases.