EDITORIAL | Rewriting history gets 100%. Making it compulsory does not

A history ministerial task team report, released in 2018, found the subject content “reinforces a memory of oppression, not of active resistance or agency”. While there was a significant pushback by African empires, kingdoms and chiefdoms against the colonial front in the 1750s, these are never celebrated in the curriculum. It stated that the content about well-developed and advanced African empires is restricted to grades 5 to 7, whose pupils are, by this stage, not well developed in terms of thinking and cognition. The report went on to say that “there is a tendency in the current CAPS (Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement) to prove a racist point that Africa has always been backwards in terms of development”. In short, the team agreed the curriculum is Eurocentric and recommended it become more Africa-centric.

So it came as no surprise when history boffins welcomed a recent announcement by the department of basic education about the history curriculum being rewritten. Basic education minister Angie Motshekga correctly pointed out that “they were quite conscious that there’s lots that needs to be done around the content of history”. Her department, she said, is at a stage where research is being conducted to determine what the correct content will be for the new curriculum, which will be phased in from 2024. Motshekga also clarified that history will not be combined with life orientation (LO), but that LO will continue to be taught as a stand-alone subject until Grade 12.

Surely one of the biggest obstacles to making the subject compulsory in grades 10 to 12 will be the shortage of qualified history teachers. And even those teaching the subject will have to be retrained.

While the move towards making history more Africa-centric is commendable, academics and scholars have cautioned against hastily introducing curriculum reform. Unisa’s Prof Noor Davids argues that research needs to be conducted at classroom level to assess the state of the subject before embarking on curriculum reform. His colleague, Prof Karen Harris, head of department of historical and heritage studies at the University of Pretoria, said crucially the new curriculum should not only look at content, but skills that equip pupils to develop abilities that enable them to be critical, empathetic, understanding, tolerant and analytical.

But the jury is also still out on whether it will be educationally sound to make it mandatory for all pupils in grades 10 to 12 to study history, one of the recommendations of the ministerial task team. Among the apprehensions is that making history compulsory should not be motivated by narrow political objectives. Its aim should not be about developing patriotic citizens or becoming a “compulsory” tool of any regime.

Surely one of the biggest obstacles to making the subject compulsory in grades 10 to 12 will be the shortage of qualified history teachers. And even those teaching the subject will have to be retrained. The task team report has also acknowledged that to further consolidate their expertise, teachers should be trained in history, archaeology and, possibly, African literature and language. This will give them a comprehensive background in teaching African history as most are trained to teach European or world history.

The report mentions that budgetary matters will have serious implications for the rollout and implementation of compulsory history. At a time when there are other urgent and pressing priorities in education, such as huge infrastructure backlogs, including sanitation and the building of new schools, can the government really afford to make history compulsory in grades 10 to 12? While rewriting the history curriculum is long overdue, it is an overly ambitious move to foist the study thereof on all pupils in grades 10 to 12, especially as the majority won’t be furthering their studies in this discipline after matric at university or Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges.​