ABSTRACT
Learning at Rosemary Gardens High School (RGHS) was hampered by representations of the school, produced through descriptions of the kinds of learners who attended this institution and the quality of the language that they had at their disposal. Students and educators alike described learner's languages as impoverished. Teachers generally described learners as better suited to technical and vocational forms of education. Although the vast majority of both teachers and students would have been classified as coloured under apartheid, differences in social class were apparent between middle-class educators and working-class students. Corporal punishment, a form of discipline, melted into the normalised violence of daily life at RGHS. Corporal punishment was still used at RGHS, despite being outlawed as assault in the South African Schools Act. Mr Konrad did say that he believed in the ability of RGHS learners and that they held the potential to attain learned professions in law, medicine and academia.
