Preview

Bantu Education and source analysis. An analysis of Dr. Verwoerd's policies on the Bantu people during apartheid.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1226 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Bantu Education and source analysis. An analysis of Dr. Verwoerd's policies on the Bantu people during apartheid.
Bantu education and source analysis

1. The main aims of the Bantu Education Act were mainly (at least according to Dr. Verwoerd) to transform education for natives into Bantu education, which will teach them things they will need to know in their lives. This is stated clearly in Source A, where Dr. Verwoerd is quoted saying "Education must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live." Reading between the lines, Dr. Verwoerd is saying that the Bantu are an inferior race that will never be equal to the whites, and that it would be a waste of resources and effort to try and teach them things they will never need to know. By saying the he almost directly suggests that the blacks should be kept down, as it would be absolutely ridiculous to try and teach him mathematics, for example, when all he will ever amount to is a farmer or a tailor.

I

In Source C it is directly stated that, as most blacks will become agriculturists, the most useful things that can be taught to them are gardening and needlework. He doesn't even give the blacks a chance, immediately dismissing them as complete idiots whom wouldn't even want the same type of education as the whites. Therefore, when planning the different syllabuses for all education, the black systems should be limited to very simple skills such as reading, writing, farming and perhaps very simple mathematics. We wouldn't want to overload the blacks with information that will only confuse them and make them unhappy, now would we? According to the Commission on Native Education the blacks; knowledge of anything requiring intelligence should be barred.

In another speech by Dr. Verwoerd (Source B) he states that "The Bantu must be guided to serve his own community in all respects" and:

"Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of European society in which he was

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Black children were not allowed to be educated or to seek education unless permitted to do so unless “the white man, master man allowed it.” (pg 33) Another requirement was that if a school was provided for the black children then the parents of those children were expected to help pay for the cost of running the school. This stipulation for funding caused black schools to close whenever funding ran out and before time for planting. Nate’s father would not agree to pay any money for his children to be educated so Nate and his brothers and sisters were never allowed an education. Instead Nate’s father would hire him out to work for white farmers to bring extra money into the home. Despite the conditions of his…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An insightful argument was constructed that, the time the law came into practice; there was limited number of public schools which taught African Americans. Therefore they argued out that the historical justification for the amendment of the constitution was not essential in the case. The court profoundly argued out that during the drafting of the change of the law by Congress, they did not indicate any clause which would necessitate the combination of public schools (McBride, 2006). Therefore, the Supreme Court affirmed equal education opportunities as guaranteed in the amendment. More importantly, the court argued out that education is a public utility and thus discrimination of children in their quest for knowledge is a denial of their rights, and it contradicts the government pledge to cater for universal education to…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Teacher's usually did a good job of ignoring the fact that one kid was shorter than another or another was fatter, but it was they, not the other students, who made my skin color an issue. The kids had only picked up on the adult cues and then interpreted them. Moreover, height, weight, and other physical characteristics were relative states. But being white was constructed a as matter of kind, not degree." He describes his social relations with his classmates as predominately a school relationship. He says, "I must have already started to segregate myself culturally, since it never even crossed my mind to invite any of the kids home with me after…

    • 1052 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He grow up inside a family with deep faith and religious beliefs, which had been inherited to a new generation. The usual practice of religion were a very common task for this boy, but he had lack of deep acknowledgments of the Christian religion do to his family not explaining things how really were. To differentiate between Jesus Christ legacy, and the fanaticism…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Christopher has just moved from Poland and has very poor English. He’s moved to a school where there are only white children in the class.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    During this time period, there was a growing ‘Exodus’ in which black people were leaving the hard conditions of country living and moving to city and urban areas where they had better opportunities. The passage relates how this exodus was hurting white business and threatened the steady supply of agricultural labor, particularly in the cotton fields. Apart from the masses of people leaving and hurting business, White people did not sit well with the idea of blacks having the opportunity to go to school because of their fear that black people who would be inspired to seek greater things than they were given. According to the passage, the general idea that many white people held about an educated black person was that their enlightened mind would grant them new nefarious thoughts to live by illegal on dishonest means (this is still an echoed belief today…).…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Education has never yet been brought to bear with one-hundredth part of its potential force upon the natures of children, and, through them, upon the character of men and of the race. In all the attempts to reform mankind which have hitherto been made, whether by changing the frame of government, by aggravating or softening the severity of the penal code, or by substituting a government created for a God-created religion, - in all these attempts, the infantile and youthful mind, its amenability to influences, and the enduring and self-operating character of the influences it receives, has been almost wholly unrecognized. Here, then, is a new agency, whose powers are but just beginning to be understood, and whose mighty energies hitherto have been but feebly invoked; and yet, from our experience, limited and imperfect as it is, we do know that, far beyond any other earthy instrumentality, it is comprehensive and…

    • 1629 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    * positive information about Africans having superior knowledge of things was omitted from school curriculum, the only information mentioned was negative information…

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    W.E.B. Du Bois believed that African Americans should educate themselves in the arts and sciences, and not so much on trade education. He feared that by being reduced to only industrial trades, African Americans would remain at the lower end of social economic…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    DuBois stresses the importance of education amongst the black race. He believes that African Americans should be educated in order to guide and teach the uneducated blacks. DuBois stresses the fact that there is a need for higher education, the importance of role models, and the concept of self-motivation for the African American race.…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    It has been found that someone’s ethnicity can have an effect on their educational achievement, as in 2006 73% of pupils of Indian origin gained 5 A*– C passes at GCSE compared with 56% of white and 47% of black pupils. It has been found that African students tend to underachieving in the educational system compared to others, with them being below average reading ability and tend to receive less GCSE’s than whites and Indians. They are also least likely to stay in post 16 education, and if they do it’ll more likely to be taking vocational qualification.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sociology: Black Like Me

    • 1714 Words
    • 7 Pages

    This example is an illustration of the theoretical argument because it depicted how the society would lead itself to instability when the rewards were based on skin color, instead of ability. Many blacks gave up the higher education because they knew they would not be able to be what they wanted or have a job of their choice after putting all the hard work into it. They knew the lack of opportunity was not due to their intellectual level, but the color of their skin, which they had no control over.…

    • 1714 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    To Kill a Mockingbird

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Knowledge, literacy, and formal education have always been viewed as a necessary thing in the African-American struggle for freedom and equality. By the 1930s money was at its very low limit because of the depression. People did what they could to make their lives happy. This made education very important if they wanted to live a decent life and not poorly. Scout and Jem as young children attended school where in order to buy a carton of milk you needed a quarter. They were lucky enough to have a well-educated father as a lawyer that provided that for them. Other children weren’t as lucky with their larger and poorer families. Basically the more educated you were in the 1930's the more opportunities of higher waged job that provided a decent amount of money. Some people didn’t necessarily have to have a college degree to have a good job, for example Atticus did just fine as a single father/ lawyer and no college degree.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout time society has handled education through many different methods and had many different goals for education. Unfortunately one of the more common goals for education has been to either oppress or deculturalize others. Up until the late 1900’s whites widened the achievement gap and keeping themselves on top by either banning blacks’ education or providing an insufficient education to everyone but the whites. The whites’ methods of “education” included deculturalizing Native Americans which made them forget more about their culture and way of life than they ever ended up learning from the school systems that they were put into. African-Americans were seeking any form of education and went to great lengths to get an education. African-Americans…

    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    schooling for black and white students. Blacks did not learn the same, got the old…

    • 463 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays