Striving for a robust history curriculum that restores dignity
I HAVE not seen or participated in the ministerial task team regarding the implementation of history as a required subject in the curriculum.
However, the pedagogically unsound and flawed position of the Education MEC requires an urgent response.
The discussion is from the vantage point of teacher education programmes within which the teaching of history will be framed.
The argument is therefore approached in a holistic manner, which I believe has to do with a re-imagined overall function of teacher education.
It seems to me that once we are clear on this, then the content of a teacher education programme might be crisper and more contextual.
In this respect, the foundational idea (regarding the aim of teacher education) is such that any competencies and capabilities for a sustainable nation have to start with quality (that includes critically-informed) programmes for a rapidly changing society, aligned to the social mandate of the National Development Plan 2030. In this respect, educating and training teachers is about imparting a set of knowledge and social competencies that will in turn be utilised to prepare our youth in various educational sites (school is one) for their social and working lives.
I wish to stress that the notion of work is to be understood as producing value in the very broad social and economic sense, including voluntary service in communities.
Mindful of this, I believe that the development of a new lens for teacher training programmes is even more important, given the legacy of coloniality that is now brought to bear on to an educational context marked by a rampant market logic with its attendant value system. My view here is that the latter (the marketisation of education) inadvertently cuts across humane and ethical values.
Given the above, the awareness of history and its relevance for the present could be a compass for navigating this journey. In other words, the (historical) past is a reference point to remake and re-imagine the future.
Here, two caveats are important. The teaching of history is not about the reproduction of nationalist propaganda, as was successfully engineered by the white colonial and apartheid projects, which unfortunately is being actualised at present. Neither is it about revising the history of past, by which is meant the insertion of a form of historical amnesia which then erases (blocks out) the effect that the Eurocentric educational system has had on the colonialised black subject.
In contrast (to the above), the inclusion of history in a curriculum for teachers is about the past, the present and the future in ways that take account of the need for our youth to understand what it means to be a human being in South Africa, Africa and other continents.
In this way, the subject of history along with those of literature, philosophy, ethics, art, among others, forms part of a Humanities curriculum. The latter teaches us about our humanity, about how to interpret the “things that people do”, in other words, the daily practices, ie the culture, that coheres members of society.
Thus, drawing on the above points, when we are thinking of teaching history we are engaging with the question about how those women and men before us have thought about the human condition, how they have expressed themselves, their positions, the questions they confront as agents in society.
In this respect, we have our historical heritage (think of the writings of Zakes Mda and James Matthews, the music of Robbie Jansen, Hugh Masekela, Simphiwe Dana, Micasa, the paintings of Appollis, playwrights/dramatists such as Govender and Magona, emerging writers and artists, to name but a few.
These make for the bricks and mortar, ie the character of our nation. Surely, in grappling with our present condition we need to know about how we have been made. Our heritage is part of who we are. The encounter with the present is also about walking ourselves through the past.
Short of this, we are but empty vessels struggling to navigate the heavy sea of the daily grind, namely, the social breakdown that we are currently experiencing.
If we are able to approach the teaching of history in a way that facilitates the understanding of the human condition and how we are all interconnected, we could then work towards the cultivation of an inclusive South African nation.
In this way, we might, just might, get beyond a view of history which is about the teaching of nationalist propaganda that writes out (of history) certain social categories.
Drawing on the above points, and cognizant of our young democracy, a history curriculum for teacher training can be approached from a very wide berth.
Here, a key aspect would be the inclusion of African canons of thought in an optimistic manner that (re)claims its positive and productive contribution to humanity.
In this respect, there might be potential for a regeneration of thinking about how contextual examples can form part of historical methods in natural science.
A few, among several examples will suffice: Ndebele art with its geometric shapes, fermentation processes in the making of umquombothi (African beer), the health properties and production of rooibos tea, to name but a few. Combine all of this, and we get a robust, vibrant and alive history curriculum that restores dignity.
In closing, having made a case for the teaching of history, in essence, I am wondering whether it is time for an engagement with the colonial and apartheid project of teaching training in its fullest form.
Professor Thaver, Faculty of Education, University of the Western Cape. Member (ministerial appointee) of the Council on Higher Education, writing in her personal capacity