Is indigenous work going to get its due in the new South Africa’s school arts curriculum? Ivor Powell investigates a muddled situation
BLAME it on the government of national unity, if you like, with its guarantees of jobs for civil servants. Or you can blame it on the new government’s White Paper on education and the central position it grants to the old apartheid education departments (almost by definition those who want it least) in driving the transformation of the education system. But, if the study of the visual arts at school level is anything to go by, the more things change, the more they don’t.
This week, simmering tensions between progressive educationists and what these days are known as the “ex- departments” — notably the former Transvaal Education Department and the former Department of Education and Training — flared into open conflict, with a letter to Gauteng MEC for education, Mary Metcalfe, from a group of educationists demanding government intervention in the way change is being implemented in the province.
The authors of the letter are progressive members of a “Field and Phase” art education sub-committee of the National Education and Training Forum. The letter was provoked by a January 19 circular, signed by ex-TED subject adviser Marguerite Prins and her ex-DET counterpart, a Mr Raath, mooting a “Gauteng Academic Management Team for Art and Art Education”.
The circular called upon the educationists who received it — all members of the NETF, which met in the second half of last year to draw up interim curricula and strategise the process of creating a new education system — to attend a meeting of the proposed management team and “present our work for assessment and dissemination”. Having done that, so it seems, they would more or less disappear, leaving the management team to get on with the business of implementing the new system on its own.
In what the authors of the letter of objection claim is a flagrant violation of the terms of reference set out by the national education ministry for changing the education system, the management team, so the circular announced, would be made up of subject advisers and academic supervisors from the ex-departments. These would implement new curricula in the province — without interference from the representatives of the new regime.
It should be noted that “implementation” here means a lot more than just administration of an already prescribed body of work.
It involves interpreting the broad provisions of a core curriculum set down at national level and approved by the Committee of University Principals (CUP) this week, taking such provisions as “more weighting towards South African art” and embodying it in actual syllabi and schemes of work. Thus, in theory, you could choose to study Pierneef or the Voortrekker Monument, or you could choose to integrate a series of formerly marginalised black artists. You could, in short, introduce meaningful change, or you could just go on with business as usual.
Business as usual. In practice, as far as can be ascertained, business in the persons of Prins and Raath — as the only subject advisers or academic supervisors, they are the only candidates for the management team. And in defiance of government provisions that, though the transformation process would be steered by the ex- departments, it would be done in co-operation with the committees set up under the NETF. The potential dangers of the situation might be indicated by noting, as the letter to Metcalfe does, that these were the two people in the old provincial structures who were “responsible for the implementation of previous (art education) syllabi and schemes of work”.
The authors of the letter objecting to the proposed management team believe they have good reason to be apprehensive. In the process set in motion by the broadly representative NETF last year — that of reviewing existing curricula, strategising the creation of a single education department and developing a new educational dispensation — Prins was appointed secretary to the “Field and Phase” sub-committee elected to review art education. In this role she was required to submit the sub-committee’s decisions to the CUP and to verbally defend them.
But when the submissions were made, Prins somehow neglected to include two crucial reports. One was the entire interim art curriculum for Standards 8, 9 and 10 — where it is recommended, among other things, that a set of options be introduced with the specific intention of promoting socially-based studies of the history of South African art, and that greater weighting be given to African and South African art studies. The other was a crucial motivation for changes in the Standard 5 curriculum, shifting the focus from rote learning to exploring creativity and the lived environment.
These were simply not presented, nor did Prins in the CUP meetings so much as note that they had somehow not been included; the members of the CUP were left to assume the sub-committee had not done its work.
At more or less the same time, Prins submitted a private report to her superior, Dr Eddie Botha, criticising the sub-committee for “lack of experience” and for proposing unworkable recommendations. Such opinions would have been strongly reinforced by, for instance, the absence of the Standards 8, 9 and 10 curricula in the CUP presentation.
Meanwhile, without any consultation whatever with her supposed co-workers, Prins last week unveiled her own “revised scheme of work” for Standard 10. It looks a lot like the old scheme of work, as educationists have noted.
For instance, South African ceramics are studied via Esias Bosch or Dirk Meerkotter only; South African painting as influenced by European art is dealt with via Irma Stern or Maggie Laubser; in a focus on South African architecture, the influence of “indigenous architecture” is nodded at but not itself considered worthy of study. Shortly afterwards, the circular went out inviting educationists to the formation of a management team.
With a wide-ranging process of consultation required, few educationalists believe a fixed and stable curriculum will appear before 1998.
In the meantime, we have only the interim curriculum as recommended by the NETF process and approved this week with very minor changes by the CUP, pending final publication by the Education Ministry.
Or maybe we don’t. During the course of this year none of the interim changes have to be implemented in any school; they are merely presented as recommended options. And at matric level the situation is even more uncomfortable; at least for this year, there will be separate exam papers set for ex-TED and ex-DET schools. In fact, separate papers have already been set, and the ex-departments argue it is impossible to change them now.
They are almost certainly wrong. Though nothing has been finalised, the Weekly Mail & Guardian has information that the committee mandated by the CUP for the arts is demanding that, at the very least, options in socio- politically based art studies be included in the examination at the end of the year in both ex-TED and ex-DET schools, despite an earlier loophole — created by the fact that the old House of Assembly schools were being used as a model for the new dispensation — entailing that such options had not been available to ex-DET students.
All that has really been effected thus far is that if you or your school wants to be part of the new South Africa, you can. The problem is: what about those who don’t?
* Approached for comment, Prins first agreed to discuss issues with the WM&G, then was forbidden from doing so. I was referred to a Dr Staples, who said I should put questions in writing. This was duly done, but no reply was given. On Tuesday this week, the ex-TED’s Willie van Staden said an unfortunate bureaucratic mix- up had occurred, but at least some of my questions would be answered. They were not, by the time of going to press. He also told me that Prins was “still looking forward” to our interview.