“Many, many people have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them have kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
S
Alinger’s sentiments expressed in The Catcher in the Rye are echoed in the recent report on the teaching of history and archaeology in schools. This report offers many compelling reasons for the teaching of history and archaeology to be strengthened. These include:
the political importance of providing a representation of the past through clear narrative, explanation and analysis;
the intellectual value of undertaking a critical evaluation of sources and evidence from the past;
the social value of teaching the common ancestry of humanity;
the necessity for cultivating empathy with varying experiences of the past and present;
the recognition of the past as a continuing process with definite implications for the present and the future.
In addition, the report emphasises the power of history to train learners to make discriminating judgements.
“Mature judgement is an essential quality which we rightly expect of all our professionals, and demand of all our dealings in daily life with bureaucrats, politicians, managers, shop stewards, taxi drivers, or teachers.”
It goes on to outline the extent of the crisis facing school history by highlighting the familiar problems of the nature of history in schools and how poorly it continues to be taught and assessed. And, it argues that, in the context of Curriculum 2005, “the severe erosion of history as a distinctive discipline and the marginal role accorded to archaeology” result in these learning areas being less able “to challenge the racial and other mythologies which remain part of our society”.
Within the existing framework of Curriculum 2005, history has been combined with geography and civic education to form a learning area called Human and Social Sciences. This new learning area was implemented for the first time in grade 7 last year and is currently being implemented in grades 4 and 8. No study of its implementation has yet been undertaken.
A cursory examination of new grade 4, 7 and 8 textbooks, however, seems to indicate that history as a discipline is indeed in danger of losing coherence. At grade 4 level it forms a fraction of Human, Social, Economic and Management Sciences. The result is that there is no space at all to construct a historical narrative and historical information is presented in an unconnected, theme-based way.
Grade 7 and 8 textbooks are able to deal with historical concepts and periods in slightly more depth. However, these books display confusion as to what historical content and contexts should be dealt with in each grade. A glance at a range of grade 7 Human and Social Sciences textbooks shows that the full gamut of South African history — from precolonial through to post-apartheid — has been tackled in one grade.
The report argues that this is a result of “the abdication of responsibility for what has to be taught” on the part of the designers of Curriculum 2005. By underspecifying what content should be taught in each grade, the new curriculum makes unrealistic conceptual demands of teachers. In the case of history education, this is likely to lead to the unnecessary repetition of certain topics — like the 1976 Soweto uprising — and the omission of other topics crucial to an understanding of modern South Africa — like the destruction of the African kingdoms.
Before the introduction of Curriculum 2005 history enjoyed two hours a week on the timetable in the middle school. It currently shares two and a half hours with geography and civic education in the Senior Phase. In real terms, this amounts to about a 50% loss in status.
In this regard, the report supports the recommendation of the Review of Curriculum 2005 (May 2000) that history and geography be taught as defined disciplines — linked but not fully integrated — in the General Education and Training band, with the time allocation increased from 10% to 15%. This recommendation has been accepted by Cabinet and will be implemented in due course.
In the meantime, there are interesting reasons cited in the report for the overall loss of status that history as a discipline is experiencing in South Africa. The dilution of history in the Human and Social Sciences had made many experienced history teachers redundant.
There is also evidence of some schools treating history as a “soft option” for less able learners. Many learners and parents believe — based on a very narrow idea of vocational education — that history has “no obvious relevance to the needs and pressures of the contemporary world”. As a result, the number of learners studying history at school and in many universities has fallen dramatically.
It is clear that the crisis facing the teaching of history in South Africa goes way beyond the classroom. In the end, it is about national priorities, or what the report refers to as “the civilising influence of history-learning upon the democratic values we would want to see inscribed in our national life”.
In the light of this, the report recommends the establishment of a National History Commission with expertise from education, history, archaeology, heritage studies, anthropology and sociology. Such a Commission should ensure that “we do not end up a country freed not only from apartheid, but also from history”.
The full report is available at http://education.pwv.gov.za
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, February, 2001.