Marseille 2007
Marseille 2007
Abstract book
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Abstract #85  -  Ideologies of education among South African young adults: what impact do HIV and AIDS really have?
Session:
  6.49: Posters A (Poster) on Monday   in  Chaired by
Authors:
  Presenting Author:   Ms Ariane De Lannoy - Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa
 
  Additional Authors:   
Aim:
Study aim: This study aims to understand the impact of HIV and AIDS on cultures and ideologies of education among South African young adults (aged 14-22). It thereby hopes to discover pathways through which the pandemics impact on young peoples chances to education can be mitigated. Background: Various studies have identified the AIDS pandemics negative impact on childrens access to, and performance in education, often placing a lot of emphasis on poverty-related issues; it has, however, also been suggested that HIV and AIDS have the potential to change the value people attach to education. It is this studys objective to try and understand how exactly young South Africans value education, and whether that value is in any way being changed under the influence of the AIDS pandemic.
 
Method / Issue:
In-depth interviews and short value-surveys were administered, and follow-up (but limited) ethnographic fieldwork was performed with ten affected and ten non-affected young adults from the same lower end socio-economic background. The focus of the interviews was on young peoples experiences of every day life in townships around Cape Town, but more particularly on their experience and perception of education, on their dreams and beliefs for the future, and on the difference therein between affected and non-affected adolescents. Additional quantitative data gathered through the Cape Area Panel Study (n = 5000 young adults from the Cape Town Metropolitan Area) add significant background data to the qualitative work.
 
Results / Comments:
Preliminary analysis learns that not so much HIV and AIDS, but other contextual factors remnants of South Africas apartheid past - as poverty, extreme forms of violence and lower levels of parental education are factors that (directly and indirectly) influence young peoples everyday lives, their dreams and the routes they choose to carve out a future for themselves. Education may or may not be part of such a route. Contrary to general beliefs, affected young adults often add a more positive, instrumental dimension to schooling, leading them away from non-conformist behaviour as truancy, drop-out, or, on a different level than education: violence and crime.
 
Discussion:
For these young adults living in the townships around Cape Town, the AIDS pandemic is a threat and an issue they have to deal with in their every day lives, but not more so than issues of poverty, violence, childhood pregnancy, etc. As did the results of earlier qualitative and quantitative research with HIV-affected mothers in townships around Cape Town, these findings indicate the need to refrain from over-generalised hypotheses about the impact of HIV and AIDS on peoples values, and to look for more holistic approaches in our ways of trying to understand and mitigate the consequences of the pandemic.
 
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