ABSTRACT
The geographical location of the schools children attend is not neutral. These locations are shaped and coloured by histories of class and race and culture. These histories are dynamic and shift as people move into and out of areas. New groups bring change. These are sometimes seen to revitalize an area or to ‘bring it down’. Demographic changes also affect people’s perceptions of schools as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Often the values of schools are in line with the local communities in which they are located, but at other times demographic shifts have meant that there are tensions between what a school represents and the values of a local community. The relationships between schools, the children who attend them, and local communities can be complex when there are broader social changes taking place in a society. This is very much the case in postapartheid South Africa. The desegregation of schooling in the early 1990s has led to the movement of many Black children from outlying townships to what are perceived to be well-resourced ‘White’ schools located in ‘White’ suburbs. In some cases this has resulted in diverse, multicultural school populations where schools work hard to deal positively with difference. In other schools, there has been ‘White flight’ where White parents who have the economic resources move their children from local schools perceived to be ‘too Black’. In all cases, desegregation has brought with it the challenges of learning to work with multicultural school populations. The demise of apartheid and its resulting political and social reconstruction have impacted on the movement of people. The racial and socio-economic profiles of many urban areas have begun to shift. In order to have an understanding of the two research schools and the influences and issues at play within them, their historical, geographic, and socio-economic contexts need to be foregrounded. This exploration is by its nature broad. It serves as a means of mapping some of the complexities that are present in the suburb Acacia and Southside are located in, painting a broad picture of the area’s shapes and colours. In locating the schools in a particular space it is also necessary to locate the workings of this research study in its place because the nature of the research is such that an omnipresent gaze is impossible. Rather the research findings presented here are the result of a localized, subjective gaze; a painting on a smaller canvas. One of the key aspects of this gaze is the spatial. The presence of the spatial in itself is a major finding of this research. Using the spatial as a lens to analyse what was happening in schools and classrooms became more and more important as the research progressed. It seemed impossible to talk about discipline, regulation, and the construction of subjects without considering the spaces within which these happen, and the ways in which these spaces are used. There are a number of spatial theories which could have been applied to this research but Foucault’s understanding of space and its interconnectedness with discipline was the most apt. Thus the discussion in this chapter is read from a Foucauldian perspective. It begins broadly by examining the schools in relation to the suburb in which they are located to provide a social, historical, and spatial context. The focus narrows to thinking about the spatial organization of the schools
themselves and then to the utilization of space within individual classrooms. This results in a final discussion that considers some of the possibilities and challenges of classroom spatial organizations in teachers’ management and regulation of children.
