128-137 Challenges to Reading

Curriculum Change in South Africa Since 1994 The development of a national curriculum is a major challenge for any nation, and when a whole country depends on it to transform society in one broad stroke, it imposes tremendous expectations on such a curriculum. South Africa’s democratic government has inherited a divided and unequal system of education and must recognise that apartheid is not the only force that has contributed to the challenges South Africans face in the development of an effective education system. The influences and waves of educational reform worldwide have rolled through South Africa uncritically and have been passively absorbed, sometimes without regard for South Africa’s multiple realities, contexts, and paradoxes. Curriculum 2005 was the first major curriculum statement of a democratic South Africa. Deliberately intended to simultaneously overturn the legacy of apartheid education and catapult South Africa into the 21st century, it was an innovation both bold and revolutionary in its magnitude and conception. Curriculum 2005 was streamlined between January and July 2001 in order to ensure that its goals and vision are more easily realised in the classroom. Although I was privileged to be a part of the National Task Team and gained many insights during the curriculum review process, the views expressed in this paper are my own.