This study offers a portrait of the schooling experiences of black South African student teachers. Approximately 1,000 students were involved in the study, which was conducted over 5 years. The project was designed to help the instructor examine curriculum studies courses for their ability to enable student teachers to reflect on their own practice and engage in curriculum issues. Most students at the university (University of Durban-Westville) are black and of Indian or African descent, but the student body is greatly diversified in terms of ethnicity, economic status, language, and religion. They graduated from high school in a number of different education departments, each for an exclusive race or ethnic and language group. Common themes emerged from their experiences. The first is that schools are violent places, characterized by political, state-linked, or gender violence. A second theme is that South African schools for blacks are steeped in authoritarian culture, a reflection of the apartheid system. Another characteristic of the schools is that learning meant memorizing, that school success meant regurgitation of facts. A fourth theme was that learning is very difficult for the poor. A final common theme was that language makes a big difference. Black African children typically had to learn in a second or third language, and could be punished for speaking their own languages. The experiences of black students hold a number of implications for curriculum instruction, and require taking into account the discrepancies between the approaches being taught in teacher education and the actual experiences of students in their own schooling. (Contains 11 references.) (SLD)