Resumo

MNISI, Nomsa  e  MATHEBULA, Thokozani. Meritocracy and citizenship education of learners with mild intellectual disabilities in post-apartheid South African schools. Journal of Education [online]. 2025, n.99, pp.105-121. ISSN 2520-9868.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i99a06.

Worldwide, meritocracy serves as one of the key aims of education in embodying justice by emphasising individual intelligence, skills, and talents to validate individuals' success. In context, learners with mild intellectual disabilities require education primarily to represent justice by developing their intellectual and adaptive functions in achieving success. We identify as problematic the fact that the South African Schools Act (No. 84 of 1996) embraces meritocratic liberal-based citizenship education in educating learners with mild intellectual disabilities but stifles civic republican-based citizenship education in the process. Methodologically, in this philosophical paper, we employ descriptive, analytical, and evaluative approaches and adopt Tomasevski's 4A-scheme framework (1999) that is intent on achieving human rights in education. Essentially, the Schools Act fosters a liberal-based citizenship education that, in turn, fosters inequality by compromising educational availability; it encourages individual achievement, thus impeding accessibility, favours market-based models, thus denouncing acceptability, and promotes a rewards system that impedes adaptability. A civic republican-based human rights citizenship education is presented as a solution to reframe the embrace of meritocracy in educating learners with mild intellectual disabilities in schools.

Palavras-chave : citizenship education; learners with mild intellectual disabilities; meritocracy; schools; South Africa.

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