If the schools can’t come to the museums, the museums will go to the schools, writes Janette Bennett
In the Eastern Cape, most of the 6 000-plus schools are nowhere near a museum. Culture officials, concerned that the stories kept alive in the museums would never reach the children of the province, decided to do something about it. So they set a first in South Africa.
Copies of a new publication, called Umjelo (a water furrow, to symbolise knowledge) and funded by the museums and heritage resources directorate in the provincial departments of sport and recreation and arts and culture, are on their way to each of the province’s schools. At the launch of Umjelo on November 7, the publication was officially handed over to the Department of Education whose task it is to take it to each school. In simple language and a clear format, Umjelo guides teachers on how to help learners to use museums.
Denver Webb, the director of museums and heritage resources in the Department of Arts and Culture, says Umjelo is targeted at learners and teachers – it is designed to provide resource material that will assist them in the implementation of outcomes-based education. He says the department administers 15 museums, some of which are leaders in different fields of research. “But a lot of this research does not reach ordinary people. The publication of Umjelo was conceived as a means of making this research accessible to a wider audience.” Museums, Webb says, have a very strong educational role, and this initiative “is a concrete manifestation of that role”.
Similo Grootboom, a former history teacher and the department’s mover behind Umjelo, says most learners believe, as he once did, that a museum is a dull place where stuffed animals are kept – not a vibrant testament to a living history.
So, among other things, the first edition tells the story of the prophet Enoch Mgijima who led a group of Christians, calling themselves Israelites, at Bulhoek, near Queens-town, in the early 1900s. Charismatic Mgijima shared his visions with his people, attracting 3 000 loyal followers to Bulhoek. But the Israelites’ refusal of a government order to move from the land – they were waiting here for the world to end – sparked a battle with police that left 183 Israelites dead.
A memorial to the Israelites was opened at the site earlier this year. Grootboom says: “Bulhoek represents my forefathers’ resistance to an unjust system and it is one example of a situation that must not happen again.”
Umjelo will be published twice a year. It is edited by teacher Ilse Batten.
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, December 2001.