Secondary Schooling and Rural Youth Transitions in Lesotho and Zimbabwe

Abstract

Based on case studies centered on two rural secondary schools in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, this article examines the gendered impacts of schooling on young people’s transitions to adulthood. School attendance is shown first to disrupt the conventional pathways to adulthood: Young people attending school may leave home sooner than they otherwise would and take responsibility for their day-to-day survival, whereas marriage and childbearing are often delayed. More significantly, secondary schooling reflects and contributes to a growing sense that adulthood itself is not fixed. An alternative version of adulthood is promoted through schools in which formal-sector employment is central. Yet although young people are encouraged to opt for and work toward this goal, only a minority are able to obtain paid employment. The apparent possibility of determining one’s own life course serves to cast the majority of young people as failures in their transitions to adulthood.