SDG4 and the Ambiguity of Sustainable Development: The Case of Poor Schools in South Africa

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was conceived as a blueprint for development and an acknowledgment that poverty and multiple deprivations continue to plague large sections of the world’s population. Target 4.7 of SDG4, in particular, reads as follows: “By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development”. This article considers the question of how schools in contexts of extreme poverty and deprivation can sustain their continued existence. It aims to establish the specific nature of such contexts and engages in a discussion of the ethicality and complexity of imposing sustainable development content knowledge on children living at the edge of survival. Data from eight school principals were generated using a qualitative research approach that employed a series of in-depth interviews and onsite observations. The findings reveal the extent of community poverty and its effects on schools, the extent of neglect regarding poor schools and their struggles with sustainability, the extent of food insecurity and in-school feeding schemes, as well as the levels of desperation felt by school principals as they respond to the conditions they encounter. Teaching (and learning) the content of this Target 4.7 is likely to present a particularly complex challenge in those school contexts characterized by severe destitution and deprivation, given the content’s middle-classness in contradistinction to the immediate lived experience of the destitute.