The new school administrators are trying to equalize resources by decreeing that average classroom size must be between 35 and 40 pupils all over the country. Last year, it was 80 in many black rural areas and 20 in many white suburbs. In recent years, white parents who wanted to preserve their schools' old standards could supplement government funds with their own fees. But the new government has laid down a new condition. No one has said yet where the scholarships will come from.
Many blacks find the new opportunities bracing.
We are tremendously inspired by the note on which the school year has begun, said Cheryl Carolus, deputy secretary general of the African National Congress, the dominant party in the coalition government. School desegregation is going to be wonderful for South Africa. It's the way we're finally going to break down apartheid and racism, just by the physical interaction of the kids. One used to hear the same sort of idealistic pronouncements in the 1960s in the United States, when the victories of the civil rights struggle were fresh and everything seemed possible. As most Americans will wearily attest a generation later, desegregation doesn't always mean that blacks and whites live happily ever after.