Diversity High: Class, Color, Culture, and Character in a South African High School

by Saloshna Vandeyar, Jonathan Jansen

Diversity High offers special insight into school change and social transition in racially divided communities. It underlines the obvious notion that change is difficult and confirms that leadership in an academic environment matters in changing schools. Vandeyar and Jansen provide a thorough investigation allowing readers to distinguish second-order changes (changes to curriculum, staffing, culture, and leadership), from first-order changes, (changes in student complexion in de-racializing schools). The study demonstrates the non-linearity of reforms by capturing the dynamism of change in powerful photographic records ranging from origins to change (demonstrated through black and white to color pictures). Conveying complexity through the ways in which race, class and culture intersect to produce unintended consequences; this book is concise and expertly researched. Ultimately, Vandeyar and Jansen celebrate human agency over determinist structures at the center of change through their in-depth analysis of a white South African high school that pursued transformation against the grain of its own racial biography.

156 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2008