AbstractsCommunication

However much ideologically diffuse argument there may be about the purposes of education, few would deny that it plays an integral part in the political and economical processes of societies. For the realities of power and the organisation of socio-economic structure are perhaps nowhere more clearly revealed than in a country's educational institutions. Education can maintain the existing social order as well as promote varying kinds of change (Toffler, 1971). Social scientists accept that "education is perhaps the most directly effective socialising activity serving the interests of dominant establishments" (Schlemmer, 1986: 1). Its curricula is a means of inculcating the political values as well as the skills required in the system of control and production in society (Wellington, 1987: 6). Education takes place relatively unobtrusively in homogenous societies but in deeply divided societies, it can become the focus of intense and often violent conflict. "In South Africa education is failing badly in what modern education is supposed to do draw different groups or classes together (Schlemmer, 1986: Preface). Hanf (1980), in addition, argues that education can do little to solve conflict in divided societies. He stresses that the significance of education in some societies lies in its negative role as a focus of conflict. Access to and equality of education for different groups has indeed been at the source of very bitter conflict throughout the world...