About the blog

As a Distinguished Fulbright Teacher for the 2011-2012 school year, I will travel to South Africa to study, research, and carry out professional development. My focus is on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa’s history, and I will be focusing on the various tactics, strategies, and ways that individual people, groups, organizations, both within and outside of South Africa, resisted and dissented the apartheid regime. The anti-apartheid movement was multifaceted, involving boycotts, marches, hunger strikes, music, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, international sanctions, divestment, prayer groups, labor strikes, and student protests. It involved both violent and non-violent methods, was active not only in South Africa, but also throughout the continents of Africa, Europe, and North America. It involved a diverse array of participants which included both black and white South Africans, Afrikaners and English-speaking whites, Xhosa and Zulu black Africans, Indian and “coloured” South Africans, Hindus and Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, students and the elderly, the free and imprisoned, the exiled and the banned, communists and capitalists, mine workers and newspaper editors, and so many more. I want to study and research how the anti-apartheid movement is being taught in schools throughout South Africa, including its coverage in the curriculum, how teachers teach this era, and how students are trying to make sense of it.

While in South Africa I will be visiting schools, speaking with teachers and students, sitting in on classes, and taking part in graduate courses to get a better understanding of the anti-apartheid movement. I will be doing research-based reading, analyzing the era through film and music, and visiting historical sites of the movement throughout the country. I hope this will give me a better understanding of South African history and the apartheid era, and especially how people resisted and fought against the apartheid regime. But what I really hope to look at is the numerous ways that people resist and try to create change. I have been interested in this in many historical eras, including resistance and dissent to Hitler and the Nazi regime, the Soviet Union and the satellite states of eastern and central Europe, the Chinese Communist Party over the last 30 years, and in numerous other areas of the world. I am interested in resistance and dissent because I see that many students tend to think that violence is the only way to create change, and that is what they resort to as the only solution to any problem. In my experience, when students think of non-violence, they tend to regard the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. as anomalies that wouldn’t be successful in our modern world. There are endless examples of ordinary people standing up for what they believe in, and risking their lives in doing so, and these courageous stories need to be told more frequently because it can provide students with alternatives to violence and numerous ways that change can be brought about.

I will be regularly updating this blog throughout my Fulbright experience in South Africa so check back regularly. I will be posting on how my research is coming along, my conversations with teachers, students, and ordinary citizens, my thoughts and reflections on my experiences, as well as plenty of pictures and stories.

Cheers!