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The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the history, current status and possible future directions for intellectual disability (ID) policy and practice in South Africa (SA).

The paper was developed by academics and practitioners in the field of ID in SA. A review of the literature, accompanied by a joint writing and discussion process was carried out to identify critical issues in the development of ID services, specifically facing the challenge of moving from racially based provision towards equitable services for all citizens with ID.

Progressive policy has replaced practices of scientific racism which were previously used to support the establishment of white supremacism. This positive move is still in process and has not resulted in the immediate establishment of human rights. A vibrant civil society is engaging with this task currently.

The findings point to the need for a human rights approach that takes into account the postcolonial context of SA.

There is a need for continued advocacy that is inclusive of people with ID and their families.

Continuing engagement between government and civil society is recommended to ensure the achievement of human rights for citizens with ID.

This paper is of value to ID researchers and practitioners from the global South as it describes a non-western context that might have resonance with other low and middle income countries.

Like many of his generation George George, the director of Auckland’s Seddon Memorial Technical College (1902‐22), considered marriage and motherhood as women’s true vocation and believed in separate but equal education for girls that included some domestic training. In this regard, New Zealand historians often cite him as an advocate for the cult of domesticity, a prescriptive ideology that came to be reflected in the government’s education policy during this period. But as Joanne Scott, Catherine Manathunga and Noeline Kyle have demonstrated with regard to technical education in Queensland, rhetoric does not always match institutional practice. Other factors, most notably student demand, but also more pragmatic concerns such as the availability of accommodation, staffing and specialist equipment, can shape the curriculum. Closer scrutiny of surviving institutional records such as prospectuses, enrolment data and the director’s reports to the Department of Education, allow us to explore more fully who was given access to particular kinds of knowledge and resources, how long a particular course might take, the choices students made, what was commonplace and what was unusual, and what students might expect once they completed their studies.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

Describes the efforts of the owner/directors of a private limited company to put into place a succession strategy. Considers three major themes: second generation entrepreneurs/management succession; action learning as a human resource development strategy and philosophy; and the learning organization. Concludes that people (and organizations) “learn” best from the priorities of the business, once they have been identified, and that organizational learning is really based on institutionalization of what has been learned – requisite learning.

This article examines the national and international connections made by women graduates of the School of Home Science in their efforts to develop the scholarly expertise and professional capacity that would enable them to pursue academic careers and to improve the position of women in universities. It argues that despite the obstacles, many women were able to pursue academic pathways and to establish their own authority. By undertaking a transnational analysis, this article examines webs of influence that linked women scholars in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States as well as those in the so called “centre” (Europe and the United Kingdom). It explores the networks formed by a select number of middle class women ‐ scholars such as Ann Gilchrist Strong, Elizabeth Gregory and Neige Todhunter ‐ as they attempted to expand the range of their scholarly work beyond national borders. It considers the influence of appointments of women academics from the United States and the United Kingdom on; the significance of post graduate study opportunities for home science graduates; and the role of scholarships and awards that enabled two way travel between the southern and northern hemispheres. A number of tensions are evident in the way women scholars located their work in new and emerging fields of academic knowledge within the university. This article explores interrelationships between women academics and graduates from the School of Home Science at the University of Otago and academic women in the United Kingdom and the United States. The final section of the paper examines the academic and scholarly life of Catherine Landreth who exemplifies the experience of a select group of women who gained personally, culturally and professionally from their international opportunities, experiences and networks. It considers Landreth’s transnational travels in search of scholarly expertise, the influence of her personal and professional networks, the significance of her pioneering work in the emerging field of early childhood education and the constraints experienced in a highly gendered academic enclave. To begin however it gives a brief overview of the introduction of Home Science at the University of New Zealand and the influence of initial international appointments on the expansion of women’s academic work at the University of Otago.

To explore the edges of literature, one must look at contemporary literary reviews and journals. The themes and styles of writing in these reviews and journals reveal new ideas and trends in the literary community. These edges are often rough and not polished, they may present more extreme points of view or they may introduce new subjects. The latest issue of Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, exemplifies this. The theme of the Winter 1993–94 issue is “Borderlands,” edited by Russell Banks and Chase Twichell. In his introduction, Banks says: “But as Doris Lessing says ‘Things change at the edges,’ and insofar as I myself want things to change, and I do, for this world as presently constituted is intolerable, then my ongoing affection for work written ‘on the edge’ is political. I am still sufficiently optimistic to believe that if enough decent people see how bad things are on the borders, they will begin to change things there…The stories and narratives (include) white voices, black voices, male and female, with narrators speaking African‐American English, Hispanic‐American English, and Anglo‐American English, talking high church and low, downtown and up‐: these are the voices that daily surround us; and because they come to us, not from some dreamed‐of center where no one in America lives anymore, but from the inescapable borderlands, they speak for us all.” Chase Twichell reflects in her introduction on what she looked for in deciding what literature to select for this issue. “In terms of the task of editing, this means I now look hard at poems that carry the flags of outrage and grief, even if their surfaces are ‘rough.’ In fact, I've come to value highly some kinds of roughness because I believe they carry their cargos more honestly, in fact more precisely, by refusing to try to smooth unsmoothable edges.” These thoughts fascinated me and seemed to express the new directions and new ways of looking at literature. Many of the contemporary literary reviews and journals attempt to do just this.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

There is no argument among serious researchers that a mongoloid stock first colonized the New World from Asia. Nor is there controversy about the fact that these continental pioneers used the Bering Land Bridge that then connected the Asian Far East with Alaska.– Gerald F. Shields, et al.American Journal of Genetics (1992)