BARBARA JOHANNESSON looks at In Search of History (Grade 12) by Jean Bottaro and Pippa Visser (Oxford University Press, R74,95, Teacher’s Guide R79,95) and Looking into the Past (Grade 12) by Yonah Seleti et al (Maskew Miller Longman, R69,95)
WHEN preparing for the matric history examination, it is essential to use a textbook which thoroughly covers the syllabus, and this book will serve your learners well in this respect. The authors are experienced matric teachers whose students get good grades in the examinations.
Because the exam is content-laden, there is a lot of text to read. The layout provides some white space which relieves the density of the text somewhat, but understanding everything in the text is sometimes difficult. To help you to get to grips with 20th-century history at this level, you should try to read more widely than one textbook.
If you teach matrics it’s a good idea to get into the habit of reading a newspaper once a week, and listening to news and/or historical programmes on the radio or television, and encourage your students to do the same.
Apart from a detailed narrative text, this book contains loads of well-selected sources, including photographs. They are well-captioned and functional and it is clear what to do with them. It is a pleasure to see an index, a glossary, a recommended reading list and the consistency of features throughout the book. This book shows dedicated editorial care.
Teachers should get hold of the Teacher’s Guide for this book, which is a unique companion to a matric textbook and includes continuous assessment assignments and memoranda, essay memoranda and summary notes for each section of work.
You should also remember to check the exact exam requirements in your province, and try to get hold of past provincial exam papers to prepare learners for what to expect at the end of the year. You should ask your local subject adviser for support in this matter.
It is surprising that the publishers have not given the readers of Looking into the Past Grade 12 any information on the authors, apart from their names. They are a good, strong mix of cutting-edge academics and experienced classroom history teachers, with the unusual added benefit of being from different regions of South Africa. I can understand why many publishers do not identify their authors, but would have thought this highly qualified author team would be worth promoting without any fear of embarrassment.
History is one of the most exciting subjects students can ever hope to study. Unfortunately the matric exam requires a lot of learning off by heart — and textbooks have to reflect the needs of the exam. So, like all matric books, this one is content-heavy in order to make it useful. The narrative is sometimes cumbersome and dull, and not always clear. However, the book is packed with a wide range of sources and activities, which can engage learners with the content. The features, like the timelines at the beginning of chapters, are extremely useful, and so are the ”New Words” boxes. The personality ”Profiles” provide helpful biographies.
Publishing school books in a hurry is the norm these days, and typographical errors creep in — here is just one rather unfortunate example: on page 321, former Prime Minister BJ Vorster is mistakenly called an ”anti-Nazi”. He was most certainly a Nazi sympathizer!
The ”Foreword” to the book seems to have been written as an afterthought in an attempt to persuade review committees that this is an outcomes-based education (OBE) book. For example, it states, ”This unique series of books covers the interim curriculum introduced in 1995, but is finally based on the ideas of the outcomes-based approach to learning.” This is a contradiction in terms. The matric syllabus relies heavily on rote-learning content, while OBE emphasises critical thinking and understanding.
Alas, no matter how good the authors are, they are poorly served by the syllabus and the exam. Hopefully, the parameters of the matric history syllabus and the type of assessment will change soon, and publishers and authors will be given enough lead time by the Department of Education to develop some pioneering books which make the study of school history more rewarding.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, March 20, 2000.
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