A new project has the huge task of changing perceptions that history is a dead-end subject
Nawaal Deane
“In one major Free State town, only three out of 24 schools continue to offer history up to matriculation level,” said Minister of Education Kader Asmal at the launch of the South African History Project this week.
Historians, academics and dignitaries assembled in the Old Fort in Johannesburg which once held freedom fighters in its cells in a show of support for the crisis facing history in schools around the country.
The project was born out of recommendations by the history and archaeology panel, appointed by Asmal last year to investigate the deterioration of history and put forward proposals to deal with it, and the review of Curriculum 2005 under Professor Linda Chisholm.
It aims to bring history back into the curriculum by making it more exciting and accessible to pupils. A 12-member panel of expert historians and teachers will create forums for history teachers and specialists to develop the curriculum and raise the standing of history.
Asmal emphasised the importance of history, saying that it teaches “the relevance of the past, and its bearing on the creation of a more liberated present”.
“The actual study of history as a subject is experiencing a very serious decline across a range of study and teaching levels,” he said. Last year one of South Africa’s leading universities experienced its lowest enrolment of history students in two decades.
According to Asmal, many schoolchildren have never heard of the passbook their parents had to carry, and they believe apartheid was something that happened in the olden days. “After our passage to democracy in 1994,” he said, “history was feared. It was downgraded in the curriculum and ignored in schools.”
He said the project is not a “rarefied intellectual pursuit” but will be an intensive, countrywide project with a budget of $500000 donated by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The project comes at a crucial time when morale among history teachers is at a low. “I would prefer to teach guidance rather than history,” says a teacher who has taught history for more than 20 years. “We are still using apartheid textbooks and forced to teach boring facts.”
The project has the huge task of changing perceptions that history is a dead-end subject. “Even though I would like to study history, it will not get me a job. I had to choose science and mathematics because I want to be an accountant,” says Wendy Motsisi, a grade 11 pupil from Letsibogo Girls High.
Students at most state schools choose to study commercial subjects instead of history in the hope that they will find employment. “Our students are apolitical, with their focus on the commercial world,” says Grace Bhikha, a history teacher at Chris J Botha Senior Secondary School. She points out that the students do not choose history because in their opinion it will not assist them in climbing the corporate ladder.
Both the ministry and the panel recognise this problem as well as the need for teacher training systems, lean resources and “discredited apartheid textbooks”.
However, project CEO June Bam is positive that the panel is committed to ending this crisis and changing these perceptions. “The key would be to show students that history is a crucial component of human resources,” she says.