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Paul Hendricks

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Paul HendricksPaul Hendricks is a school teacher and an independent researcher from Cape Town, South Africa. He has an interest in history, education and the visual arts. His doctoral thesis focused on non-collaboration and the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) in the Western Cape. This paper on the TLSA and non-racial school sport forms part of a wider research area that explores the issue of resistance in education and its connection with the uncovering of alternative educational discourses and practices.

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

Reflecting on an alternative sports praxis: The Teachers’ League of South Africa
(TLSA) and non-racial school sport in the Western Cape, 1950s – 1990s.

The present discourse on the transformation of sport in South Africa foregrounds critical questions on what constitutes a viable praxis in school sport.  My paper seeks to explore a sports culture that evolved within the ranks of the antiestablishment teaching fraternity in the Western Cape between the 1950s and 1990s. It specifically considers the contribution of the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) teachers to what could be termed a counter-consciousness. The paper seeks to explore how this outlook provides new possibilities for addressing the deep crisis of transformation within South African school sport at present. The paper notes that although the TLSA’s educational ideas were developed within a context that was vastly different to the current one, its early pedagogical discussions and formulations remain instructive for the transformation of school sport today. Elaborated upon is the TLSA’s non-racist worldview, and how this point of departure spurred the organisation to wed politics and school sport in opposition to the apartheid government’s race-based educational policies. Operating within this oppositional but also imaginative framework that demanded
teachers and students look beyond the confines of the ghettoes, the TLSA consistently advocated a counter hegemonic praxis that elevated the ‘intrinsic’ value of sport and its nation building virtues.

Keywords: Teachers, non-racism, counter-consciousness, re-imagine, nation buildin

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