The experiences and challenges of women teachers' lives.

This study explores women teachers’ lives to understand their experiences of teaching in South Africa today. Accountability and a culture of performativity have to come to dominate schooling in South Africa. Since then, teachers have decreased discretion and autonomy over their work. This study examines the claim that educational reforms and initiatives have changed the nature of teachers’ work. This is a qualitative study drawing on autobiographies, journal entries and interviews. This study which was conducted with four women teachers from secondary schools, provides a commentary on their past experiences with the intention of exploring their identity formation, and how it frames the enactment of their personal and professional identities. The study analyses the ways in which women teachers experience the new mode of regulation which has changed the nature of professionalism and teacher identity. It examines the expansion of teachers’ roles and responsibilities and their negotiating a balance between work and family. The findings show that the women teachers bring into schools experiences gleaned from their personal history. A prominent feature in the narratives is the women teachers’ struggle to find a balance between the demands of home and school in the light of the new mode of teacher regulation. This thesis contributes to South African research on women teachers and their negotiation of the relationship between work and home

The Force-Out

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. As she plodded up the walk to the front door, Molly heard the television blaring. The clamor of the ball game rankled and she winced at the announcer\u27s piercing voice. It\u27s a three-two pitch, and -- He struck him out

Reflections on Racism and World Order

This Article is about international racism. Racism is not simply a local or national phenomenon, it is an immense global problem. Indeed, its tentacles stretch from the local to the global and back to the local. Let us put the picture of international racism into perspective by tying it to the claims made to eradicate racism in economic relations. Apart from affirmative action, there are two other approaches: either to assert the notion that reparations is a way to ameliorate the worst manifestations of racism and provide for racial justice, or to join that with the notion that there is indeed a universal right to development, and that every human being has the right to fully develop their personality, to fully develop their emotional, material, cultural, and social well-being without unjust or unfair discriminations. This indeed, I would suggest, is also the foundation of the idea of human dignity. These two ideas have emerged, and they have traveled, not often in easily complimentary pathways