Dr. Mackenzie Ishmael Chibambo ^*

• Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

This study argues that Open and Distance Learning (ODL) has continued to function as the platform for producing factory-like workers and white colour labourers whose prime function is to service the capitalist labour market. The study utilized the Correspondence theory by Bowles and Gintis, the Factory Education Model (FEM) and the Industrialized Teaching Model (ITEM) by Otto Peters as theoretical propositions for explaining and understanding how schooling contexts and the hidden curriculum have managed to prepare students who would blindly serve the interests of the employers (capitalists) and the powerful elites of modern society. While the findings of this study can apply in in different higher education educational contexts, ODL has significantly demonstrated that it fully replicates the findings by the Correspondence theorists, FEM and ITEM probably because of the nature of the delivery mode and its historical foundations. While some scholars may find nothing unusual about these coincidences, the truth remains that existing ODL policies and practices have continued to promulgate epistemological injustices while thwarting human agency and different freedoms. On this basis, this study has proposed educational practices that are guided by the principles of Engaged and Critical Pedagogy such as the ones proposed by Paulo Freire and bell hooks as the best options for undoing the harms perpetrated by the FEM and ITEM. Methodologically, this study utilized Critical Hermeneutics and a qualitative research design through discourse analyses, observations and livedexperiences.. Critical hermeneutics was chosen for its ability to illuminate power-relations and ideologies that seek to promote hegemony, domination, exploitation and control over the powerless individuals.