PREGA GOVENDER: Warning over making history compulsory at school
'If they are going to do it, it will be a disaster. Where are the teachers going to come from?'
EXTRACT
The study, which involved 20 of the education faculties that offered history, found that financial constraints limited the faculties’ capacity to appoint academic staff, which resulted in a few academics teaching large history classes.
Kallaway, who declined an invitation by the Department of Basic Education to serve on the task team which was appointed in June 2015, informed the DBE in a letter at the time that its desire to make history compulsory did not address key issues.
“Nothing short of a comprehensive look at the whole history education area and its relation to the rest of the curriculum is needed if we are to understand the nature of the problem.
A recommendation that history be phased in as a compulsory subject in grades 10 to12 has received strong but wide-ranging views from historian and academics. Peter Kallaway, retired emeritus professor of education at the University of the Western Cape, has dubbed the move a “disaster” while Marjorie Brown, the head of department for senior school history at Roedean School in Johannesburg, warned against the subject being “dumbed down”. But history textbook writer Gengs Pillay said the recommendation was “great news for South Africa”.The history task team has recommended that history be phased in between 2023 and 2025, so that there is sufficient time to produce more history teachers. It also recommended that life orientation as a compulsory subject in grades 10 to 12 be scrapped. “If they are going to do it, [make history compulsory] it will be a disaster,” Kallaway said. “Where are the teachers going to come from?” His concerns echo the main finding of a study that was jointly unde...
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