St. Benedict's hosts national conversation on education transformation

Coinciding with Youth Month, the annual Embrace Symposium brought together 100 representatives from 24 schools to address the future of our nation by placing youth-centered education at the center of the conversation.

The conference, organized by St Benedict's College, issued a powerful call to South African teachers to actively integrate local heritage into modern schooling, to ensure that every child feels a deep sense of belonging.

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Rather than treating it as a vague ideal, the events of June 4 and 5 challenged teachers to practically rethink the everyday classroom environment so that learners can develop into their authentic selves.

An important conversation took place on this year's theme, 'Let's Meet Under the Tree: Using Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pedagogy in Education as a Path to Social Reform'.

While Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) sounds overly academic, the concept is straightforward: integrating traditional African knowledge, local customs, languages, and community-centered methods of learning into the school system.

School leadership recognized that since the core mission of schooling is learning and development, it was important to review and adapt the traditional curriculum through a South African-specific lens, bringing local knowledge systems into everyday education.

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Redefining Indigenous Knowledge Systems to Create a True Home
The program explored how IKS can promote everyday psychological safety. In a powerful presentation, psychologist Eric Kabongo redefined the definition of IKS, describing it as deep knowledge and worldview that exists entirely outside of textbooks, passed down through language, oral storytelling, family structures, and community.

Ultimately, Kabongo challenges us to consider whether mainstream schools are actually making space for this knowledge or silently erasing it.

He defined “indigenous” not just as a historical label, but as something that makes a person feel at home. He said true change requires daily normalization of diverse stories and practices rather than mere symbolic recognition on Heritage Day.

Putting belonging into practice: overcoming traditional barriers
This profound call by Andre Oosthuysen, acting head of St Benedict's, to make schools a psychological 'home' was directly linked to real-world institutional change.

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Reflecting the host school's commitment to driving change from the top down, Oosthuysen shared how the institution has adopted a completely open hair policy, allowing boys to wear afros, dreadlocks or ponytails as authentic expressions of personal identity.

The basic principle is simple: “A boy's hair is his aura. As long as hair does not hinder a boy's academic efforts, it should not be excessively controlled.”

However, implementing these changes requires confronting deep cultural inertia. The juvenile policy has sparked backlash from some parents and alumni who see the change as a decline in discipline, despite no change in student behavior.

Reclaiming language and identity
Professor Connie Makgabo, an academic and experienced teacher at SALNS, presented an approach where classrooms evolve from rigid academic spaces to emotionally safe environments.

He criticized the colonial legacy of using English as the primary language of learning and teaching, noting that linguistic exclusion fosters deep embarrassment among non-English speaking learners.

Calling for a radical change towards language revival, he said that teaching without treatment was like “watering a stone”.

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Lawyer and teacher Chris Harrison highlighted the language, warning about a worrying trend in which Afrikaans-speaking parents choose to speak only English at home, resulting in a weakened home language that undermines a child's cognitive development. He challenged specialized education to stop the devaluation of mother tongues and urged white South Africans to actively learn local languages ​​to break out of monolingual complacency.

Shifting the Center: Courageous Places

High school history teacher Tebogo Maneli made a powerful, deeply personal call for a fundamental shift toward African-centeredness.

Emphasizing the concept of institutional spaces, Manelli stressed that educational environments cannot always be completely safe, but they must always be courageous. She urged teachers to develop spaces where uncomfortable, hard conversations about race, systemic gatekeeping, and identity can happen openly without resorting to automatic defensiveness.

From sympathy to truth
The profound impact an empathetic teacher can have on a life is brought to life by media personality and broadcaster Dan Corder, who shares his personal journey as an unconventional child with generalized autism and ADHD, who struggled with severe social anxiety and a debilitating stutter.

He credits his high school debate coaches and teachers for saving his life by responding to his eccentricities with empathy, patience, and humor.

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Corder urged independent and religious schools to leverage their moral authority to move beyond demonstrative compliance and elite separatism, turning their institutional power into genuine community engagement and radical, active support for under-resourced schools.

Shared experiences and lived a sense of belonging. The opportunity for open, honest dialogue extended directly to breakout sessions, where representatives from different schools and backgrounds shared ideas for taking these learnings back to their institutions.

While parents rarely see this level of dedication behind the scenes, delegates demonstrated that they are passionate custodians of their children's education, driven by a strong desire to see a change that helps learners thrive.

Ultimately, the Embrace symposium demonstrated that true change is not about symbolic recognition on Heritage Day, but about moving toward lived, daily connectedness where every learner can bring their whole self to school.

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These important, transformative conversations were made possible thanks to this year's sponsor, Motus Bedfordview, whose support ensured that these essential educational conversations could take place. Next year, the Embrace Symposium will return to tackle even more difficult, urgent topics that must be highlighted to bring about real change in South African education.