In search of historical consciousness: An investigation into young South Africans' knowledge and understanding of 'their' national histories

Kate Angier

doi:10.18546/lre.15.2.03

Abstract

This study reports the findings of an investigation into young South Africans' knowledge and understanding of their national past derived from narrative accounts of South African history written by 27 university students who had recently completed the national school history curriculum. Analysis of these narratives indicates two fundamental differences in the way the history of South Africa is told, in terms of emphasis (the relative weight assigned to different periods and people) and of agency (who 'did' and who was 'done to'). These differences point to the continued importance of racial identity as a factor in the formation of a national historical consciousness in post-apartheid South Africa. The highly selective emplotment of South Africa's past by the students highlights the importance of sociocultural factors in the development of young people's historical consciousness, a conclusion that has implications for classroom pedagogy. These findings suggest that unless the historical understanding with which students come to the classroom is engaged and is complicated through evidence-based historical enquiry then neither the 'disciplinary' nor 'social justice' aims of the intended curriculum will be realized.

Highlights

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.(T.S
The white narrative is characterized by a marked distancing of the past and a strong sense of own agency to the exclusion of all others. These findings raise interesting questions for future research. That such a superficially homogeneous group of students in terms of their class and education can produce national histories with such diverse emphases and agency, despite exposure to a standard national curriculum taught under optimal conditions, suggests that sociocultural factors beyond the classroom and curriculum play an important role in shaping historical understanding and consciousness, a conclusion that is supported by international studies
Research into how people learn has shown that learners come to our history classrooms not as empty vessels but with preconceptions and understandings. They may appropriate new concepts for official purposes but revert to their prior understanding once outside the school context (NRC, 2005). Such a ‘double historical consciousness’ has been well documented in African-American students in the United States (Epstein, 2009), for whom official textbook accounts of progressively won civil liberties were held in tension with an understanding of the past informed by community and personal experience, which told a more credible version of the ongoing victimization and marginalization of African-American people

Summary

Introduction

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. The school subject ‘History’ was lost in a cul-de-sac of integrated studies and outcomes-based education, which privileged form over substance and marked the triumph of forgetting over memory It was not until 2003 that a new national history curriculum for a ‘new’ South Africa was launched, the year that the majority of students in this study entered the formal school system in Grade 1. Underpinning the themes and key questions selected for inclusion, the curriculum does emplot a new celebratory story of the nation: progressing from the study of first peoples, the long-ago hunter-gatherers and African farmers, to European colonization, slavery and apartheid, through struggle and resistance, to liberation and reconciliation This is not taught as a coherent narrative, key ‘turning points’ are identified in the content framework which align to post-apartheid public holidays and act as milestones along the ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ (to borrow the title of former president Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, published in 1995). This paper goes in search of the historical consciousness of these ‘born-free’ South Africans: schooled in racially diverse classrooms and taught from a history curriculum whose intention is to promote social justice and inculcate disciplinary thinking and multi-perspectivity rather than the memorization of a single story of the nation

Methodology

Conclusions

Findings

Notes on the contributor