CHAPTER ONE BACKGROUND AND ORIENTATION
- INTRODUCTION
Career aspirations of black youth in South Africa need to be understood against the broader background of educational realities facing them. It thus becomes imperative to look at career development and in the process focus on career education. Career education according to Stead and Nqweni (1999:161) is one of the most critical modes of career service delivery. In career education school guidance forms a fundamental part.
Dovey (1980:8) notes that school guidance was only introduced in Black schools in 1981 whereas it was legislated in White schools in 1967. School guidance programmes (which incorporate career counselling) are constructed on the premise of the Bantu Education Act No 47 of 1953 which reasons that:
“We (the ruling Nationalist Party) should not give the Natives an academic education, as some of the people are too prone to do. If we do this we shall later be burdened with a number of academically trained Europeans and non-Europeans, and who is going to do the manual labour in the country? We should so conduct our schools that the natives who attend schools will know that to a great extent they must be the labourers in the country”. (Eiselen Report in Kgoale 1987:60).
The researcher’s experiences of Guidance as a student and guidance teacher are captured in Mathabe and Temane (1993:31-32) as follows:
“
- There are no adequately trained career counsellors to provide the service effectively in the schools.
- Teacher training syllabi focus heavily on theory. Graduating teachers, therefore, lack in practical skills to use readily in schools.
- Probably because of lack of training, teachers tend to miss the developmental task of guidance….
- There is negligible involvement by parents in the career development of the students, their children. The teacher-parent link is still by far the weakest in African education, in South Africa.
- Career counselling /guidance lack an identity in the school system. It is treated as peripheral and a threat to the main concern, the examinable curriculum.
- The definition of the concept career as something that is future related tends to affect the students’ motivation to use career counselling services. ”
There are also limited subject choice options (and still no changes) available to learners. The decision about subject choice is to be taken at the end of Grade 9. Arkhurst and Mkhize (1999:168), argue that “most learners that are 14 and 15 years of age are still at career exploration phase therefore their decisions are informed by other reasons (e.g. friends) rather than future career planning”.
Career problems that Black youth have are also captured by Hartman, (in Stead, 1996:271), that many Black matriculants tend to make career choices on a trial-and-error basis because they do not have the skills of integrating career and self knowledge.
The fact that black students are a product of an educational environment that is infested with inequalities in its delivery has resulted in few role models in their communities. Williams (2001:6) notes that Blacks that have career achievements are normally found in teaching, nursing and social work. Studies conducted by Cloete (1981:69), Watson, Foxcroft, Horn and Stead (1997:633) also give evidence that Black students tend to choose careers that are in the humanities or of social type and least in the technical fields. The politico-historical context of the South African education system therefore gives some clue as to the causes of the problem of career development among the black youth.
Black females do not only face challenges of disadvantaged educational background, they also face social values as women imposed on them by society. It therefore becomes important to look at career development of women and how women are affected by career issues in the context of social issues like gender stereotypes.
