Meet Megan and Natalie, co-founders of @KapeKweendom, students in their final year of high school, public figures of pride for natural hair, and already stirring up storms in teacups. This best friend pair aims on “sprinkling magic everywhere” by “loving the crown you’re in” according to their popular Instagram page.
Natalie (right) and Megan (left) spent the afternoon with me teaching me how to care for my natural hair, all the while falling deeper in love with it.
A primary school in West Baltimore, Maryland has gotten it right. Robert W. Coleman Elementary School has introduced meditation and yoga as an alternative form of discipline to practice mindfulness, teach good habits to children, and create healthy relationships, not only between students, but with teachers as well, creating a harmonious school environment with blissful students in them.
Students practicing meditation and yoga.
image source: Holistic Life Foundation
I’ve searched a couple of academic papers, who’ve searched a dozen more academic papers, and it seems there are no conclusions. A large amount of social experiments have been conducted. Kids have been put head to head, used as guinea pigs, in an endless debate of which is better: Religious or secular schools?
Investigating South Africa’s infamous Life Orientation textbook that gets students, past and present, riled up. Students share what they want out, what they want in, and what confuses them to the core.
The FOCUS grade 12 Life Orientation textbook has been studied by students since 2013.
My curiosity for the Life Orientation (LO) textbook started in 2014. I was still in high school and a peer, Emma Garschagen, brought my attention to the frightening realities of a textbook my grade had barely opened. Sexism and harmful gender stereotypes littered the pages of our FOCUS grade 11 Life Orientation textbook. Emma came to an accurate summary of the stereotypes presented: “women are victims who need to be helped, and men are never abused or weaker than women.” Continue reading
As an English major, it is compulsory that you take a couple of courses to graduate. For example, in my second year, I have the choice between two courses in each semester: an African Litreature course and an American/European Litreature course. The only rule is that we have to take at least one African Litreature course in the year. So me? I took both African Litreature courses. No, I didn’t have to. I wanted to.
Some peers roll their eyes at this idea and think I’m absolutely bonkers to be putting myself through the “torture” of South African and African litreature. I, however, am so desperate to find out more of what I never knew was actually available.
And here, my friends, is where we find the two reactions to African litreature that are a direct result from the lack of African litreature taught within high school English curriculums. Students never get taught litreature from their own damn continent.
The South African novels prescribed for my African Litreature course.
Springfield Convent High School was urged by students to change the school environment to be more inclusive of minorities.
image source: Gareth Heüer. 16 October, 2015.
Cape Town – Six ex-pupils of Springfield Convent High School, who are currently UCT students, spoke to the matric class of 2016 in August 2016 about how the school had prepared them for university. However, the UCT students mainly spoke about how the private, all-girls’ school had never prepared them for the social aspects of life outside of Springfield and specifically addressed how minorities within the school, mainly women of colour, felt that their identity wasn’t accepted or included within the environment. This mobilised the current students to demand drastic change from school authorities and to confront the ignored racism and classism within the institution. Continue reading
(image source: here)
From the time boys start primary school, they start feeling the need to shape their masculinity, make their stand, and set their place amongst the many other little boys surrounding them. In many cases, a desire for some authority over the rest of the group is instilled, and if not so extreme, a desire to be popular or be liked is established. Hegemonic Masculinity and Toxic Masculinity begin to form a relationship in the upbringing of many boys in same-sex schools. However, this has proven to have a destructive and deadly effect on the boys growing up in these environments.
