Educating the educator: Es'kia Mphahlele's schooling at St Peter's

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Periodical article

Title:	Educating the educator: Es'kia Mphahlele's schooling at St Peter's
Author:	Woeber, Catherine
Year:	2004
Periodical:	The English Academy Review
Volume:	21
Pages:	78-92
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	writers secondary education Christian education
About person:	Ezekiel Mphahlele (1919-2008)
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/10131750485310091a
Abstract:	The South African writer and educator Es'kia Mphahlele attended St Peter's Secondary School in Rosettenville, the first secondary school for black pupils in the Transvaal (South Africa), from 1935 to 1937, years which marked the academic highpoint of the Anglican mission school, and his experiences there are chronicled in his 'Down Second Avenue' (1959) and 'Africa my music' (1984). The present paper probes the ethos of St Peter's by focusing on key teachers and texts, and the educational milieu in which the pedagogical activity took place. The paper argues that the people and books Mphahlele encountered at St Peter's influenced him to the extent that he had to leave South Africa in 1957 because conditions under apartheid prevented the abundant life for which his education at the urban mission school had groomed him. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]