ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how young people from one Cape Town neighbourhood, an area that was constructed during apartheid, learnt differently in classrooms, by comparison with when they were participating in other educational places. School is not the only place that stirs hope in young people. Youth often experiment with who they are and who they would like to become in informal educational places. Young people born in post-apartheid era, such as those who feature in this study, long for an improved quality of life and chance to become upwardly mobile, valued members of their society. These are opportunities that many South Africans assumed would accompany democracy. The media, government and large sections of the general public perceive education to be vital to remedying these setbacks and accelerating transformation. Many of the born free generation, as the group born post 1994 is sometimes called, buy into this belief that schooling is the best way to escape poverty and realise their aspirations.
