A new paradigm for TVET Colleges in South Africa: A Bauhaus-ian experiment

Post 1994, the New South African government had to deal with the unequal educational system that was based on racial classification during the Apartheid regime. The legacy of Apartheid has to date influenced the state of skills development in South Africa. To address the skills crisis, in 2002 the Department of Education (DoE) introduced TVET colleges, otherwise known as Technical and Vocational Education and Training. These new sites of learning were created by merging 152 previous technical colleges into 52 TVET colleges, scattered across the country (DoE,2001). The intention of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it will identify and demonstrate 3 shortfalls in
TVET colleges, these namely being; pedagogy, human development and training. Secondly, the study will propose a theoretical framework to address the identified shortfalls by studying the character of learning institutions developed or inspired by the Bauhaus movement, such as in Dessau, Weimer and Black Mountain College in Chicago. Because the Bauhaus is Western, arguably a product of Modernism and has no physical learning institution in operation, the paper will acknowledge the failures of the movement but will however focus on the uniqueness of the movement. The Bauhaus challenged the heterogeneous nature of Modernism through diversity and collaboration within various disciplines. As an idealistic and socially oriented movement, the study will further argue why a Bauhaus driven site of learning can strengthen the current state of TVET colleges in socio-political and cultural landscape of South Africa.