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‘Not All of Us Can Be Nurses’: Proposing and Resisting Entrepreneurship Education in Rural Lesotho

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  • Claire Dungey

    (University of Durham, UK)

  • Nicola Ansell

    (Brunel University London, UK)

Abstract

Education in Lesotho, as in much of the world, has historically held out the promise of a ‘better future’. Success in school and the achievement of academic credentials were expected to lead to a secure future in the formal economy. With increasing school enrolment and growing youth unemployment, such futures are now illusory for most youth. In 2009, Lesotho introduced a radical new curriculum that aims to instil in young people skills and attitudes for entrepreneurship, enabling them to build their own futures in an increasingly uncertain world. Based on 9-months’ ethnographic fieldwork in two primary schools and their surrounding rural communities, we trace how the new curriculum is being delivered in schools and how it is intervening in children’s aspirations. Despite lessons intended to prepare them for livelihoods in the informal economy, young Basotho prize the security of a salaried job as a nurse, teacher, police officer, or soldier. We frame this contradiction in relation to concepts of doxic and habituated aspirations, concluding that due to the way schools deliver entrepreneurship education it both fails to displace long-standing doxic aspirations to professional careers, and fails to engage with young people’s habituated expectations of rural livelihoods.

Suggested Citation

  • Claire Dungey & Nicola Ansell, 2022. "‘Not All of Us Can Be Nurses’: Proposing and Resisting Entrepreneurship Education in Rural Lesotho," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(4), pages 823-841, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:823-841
    DOI: 10.1177/1360780420944967
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Thomas Yeboah & James Sumberg & Justin Flynn & Nana Akua Anyidoho, 2017. "Perspectives on Desirable Work: Findings from a Q Study with Students and Parents in Rural Ghana," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 29(2), pages 423-440, April.
    2. Karuna Morarji, 2014. "Subjects of Development: Teachers, Parents and Youth Negotiating Education in Rural North India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 26(2), pages 175-189, April.
    3. James Sumberg & Justin Flynn & Philip Mader & Grace Mwaura & Marjoke Oosterom & Robert Sam‐Kpakra & Ayodele Ibrahim Shittu, 2020. "Formal‐sector employment and Africa's youth employment crisis: Irrelevance or policy priority?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(4), pages 428-440, July.
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