‘HISTORY MAY BE MADE COMPULSORY IN ALL SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOLS’
I read with interest – and some concern – an article entitled ‘History may be made compulsory in all South African schools’ in The Sunday Times (5/4/2015). As a history teacher who has taught more history lessons than I care to remember, I wondered at the wisdom of this decision. Don’t get me wrong – I think everyone should study history and that we can all benefit from an understanding of the past. However, I would far rather learners chose to study history than have it forced on them by educational authorities who think that it will somehow make them more patriotic.
Why teach history?
When I taught history at various government schools in Johannesburg, we actively recruited future history matric candidates by extolling the virtues of the subject when they were in Grade 9. We impressed upon them how important it was to have an understanding of the past and to have the skills needed to analyse and interpret events and decisions made in the past. However the reason we were successful in getting between three and four history classes per level in Grades 10 to 12 probably had more to do with good teaching and the many distinctions the school achieved in matric than anything else. We even managed to convince future doctors that history would help them get into medical school as it demonstrated to the selection committee an ability to memorise a large amount of information and then to be able to extract what was relevant and make sense of it – and of course it was one more distinction to add to their CVs!
So why then am I horrified that the Department of Education (DoE) is considering making history a compulsory subject? What worries me is their flawed reasoning. The fact that only 22% of candidates in 2014 chose to take history in matric is alarming – but it points to the fact that the subject has lost its appeal – or more importantly bad teaching has made history a subject that no one wants to take for matric. Force-feeding history by making it compulsory will not change the fact that teenagers find history boring and irrelevant in their lives. If the DoE were saying that history teaching needed to be more inspired and that learners should be encouraged to see the relevance of studying history – that would be a different story. But to say that you can’t get a National Senior Certificate (NSC) if you don’t study history, is going to make teenagers hate the subject even more, in my opinion.
Why on earth do we need another compulsory subject anyway? At the moment candidates have four compulsory subjects: a home language, a first additional language, mathematics (or maths literacy) and life orientation. If history is added to the list of compulsory subjects that will mean that five out of a possible seven subjects will become compulsory, leaving only two real choices. Not only does this diminish the value of all the other subjects in the curriculum, including those which learners need in order to follow their chosen careers, but it restricts the freedom to choose subjects that really interest learners. It seems to me that no one has thought through the consequences of this policy change.
Take the introduction of compulsory maths for example. It is generally accepted that not everyone can do maths, so the DoE introduced maths literacy as an alternative. However, maths literacy has come with its own problems, least of which is a parent perception that it is not ‘proper’ maths and therefore will not get their offspring enough points to get into university. We now have a situation where candidates who pass other subjects are failing matric because they can’t pass maths. If someone is good at art and consumer studies, for example, but can’t pass maths, they can’t pass matric. This closes the door to most careers which require a NSC. I’m not talking about university entrance; I’m talking about any career choice after school which requires a NSC as a minimum requirement. If the same candidate were allowed free choice they would probably pass another subject that interests them and that would help them to get a job when they leave school. Not possessing an NCS condemns them to menial jobs with limited prospects. To me this is the unintended consequence of making maths compulsory.
Making life orientation compulsory has also not achieved the desired outcomes educational authorities hoped it would achieve. The Sunday Times article suggests that politicians are concerned that young people don’t know the significance of public holidays. This information is covered extensively in the life orientation curriculum at every level from the Foundation Phase to the GET Senior Phase. If the learners don’t know their significance by the end of Grade 9 then their teachers have not followed the curriculum or the learners have forgotten what they have learnt – or simply don’t care. The MEC for Education in Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, claims that making history compulsory will ‘restore the dignity of those days’. If compulsory life orientation has not succeeded in making learners venerate the past, compulsory history will certainly not do so either.
My other concern is that we should be asking ourselves what history we should be teaching at the FET level. The Sunday Times article suggests that learners don’t know enough about struggle heroes and that is why history should be compulsory. Surely that should not be the sole purpose of teaching history? There are dangers in making history serve political ends. The dangers are that it becomes propaganda – a means of glorifying a selected past with selected heroes at the expense of knowing the full story of what happened in the past, why it happened and the consequences of it happening. My generation had to endure the Great Trek year after year because the Nationalist government thought we ought to know about the heroic struggle of the Voortrekkers. But hearing it year after year made us loathe and dread the topic and put many off studying history altogether. The same may happen if we make struggle history compulsory.
In a digital age, anyone can look up information on the internet if they are curious about the past, but it is the job of the history teacher to encourage a spirit of inquiry which nurtures a desire to ask questions and to know where to look for the answers. A good teacher should also encourage learners to question the various accounts of the past and should ensure learners have the skills necessary to assess the reliability of sources. As others have said, history is society’s ‘collective memory’ which is kept alive not only by the telling of the story but by the reinterpretation of the story as time passes and new evidence is uncovered.
I agree with all the arguments which say that history should be compulsory until the end of Grade 9, but I think making it compulsory for matric will backfire on the DoE if they go ahead and make it policy. History should not be allowed to become the propaganda vehicle of one political party; it should be a subject that opens minds and teaches critical thinking. Above all it should be an enriching experience. And if that enrichment has to wait until adulthood – so be it.
What do you think? Please leave a comment below.
MacKat