Scielo RSS http://www.scielo.org.za/rss.php?pid=2223-038620130002&lang=en vol. num. 10 lang. en http://www.scielo.org.za/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://www.scielo.org.za http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200001&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This paper looks critically at representation in the history curriculum of Zimbabwe in relation to the production of subjectivity and identity that the government hopes will fulfil the quest for nationhood. It finds that content selection is skewed towards promoting a dominant group while syntactic knowledge is manipulated to make students be what the state wants them to think and be. Furthermore, the examinations reinforce the dominance of a single group by privileging metaphors that emphasize a selective narrative. The paper argues that the adoption of critical modes of address that promote critical pedagogic practice can help both the teachers and their students transcend the narrow specifications of the nationalist curriculum. This requires that the school history curriculum should be treated as a political performance which must be appraised beyond the written surface of its textuality as to uncover the unconscious and constraining representations in it. In this way teachers are likely to contribute new sentences, not oft-repeated ones, to that unending dialogue between the present and the past which is history. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200003&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en South Africa has delivered several voices of standing on the country's colonial historiography. The impact of especially 19th and 20th century colonialism on the southern tip of Africa is deeply rooted in all spheres of life, and its visibility mostly surfaced in former apartheid South Africa. In this paper, the historiography of colonialism in South Africa is concisely introduced with, as a second key aim, the discussion of a way in which FET history learners and HET history students could practically understand and experience South Africa's colonial past by exploring a regional/local colonial or post-colonial legacy. By using colonialism as topic, it is also argued that it is possible to teach any history content (whether from the FET-CAPS History curriculum content or from the variety of HET history module content) more efficiently if the topic, phenomenon or concept is studied in the light of regional/local examples. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200004&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en In early colonial times, European scientists explained and justified the aggressive and devastating expansion ofEurope into nearly every corner ofthe world. Africans, for example, had been dehumanized, infantilized and bereft of history. The legacy of this manipulative enterprise can still be observed in various discourses of Africa in Western media and education. Induced into the Western cannon by Hegel, the notion of unhistorical Africa persists to the present day. Which role does contemporary education play in the manifestation of this ignorance? This paper analyses the role Africa occupies in German history textbook narratives. In only one of four textbook series, the existence of African history before the European "discovery" (the term is literally used by the books) is merely acknowledged. Others would not even explicitly (by text or maps) place Ancient Egypt in Africa, in accordance with Hegel. Pre-colonial Africa is absent from text, it can be sometimes found on the maps as a passive receiver of conquest or trade. The post-colonial history is largely reduced to the explanations of why Africa is "poor". African sources and history archives are rarely used, priority is given to German or other Western sources. We argue that this persistent marginalization of Africa and Africans throughout the history curriculum in Germany needs to be urgently addressed by history educators and policy makers. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Using the interpretivist paradigm and approached from a qualitative perspective, this case study produced data on three purposively selected contemporary South African history textbooks with regards to their representation ofheritage. Lexicalisation, a form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), was used as method to analyse the pre-generated data from the selected textbooks. In this Fairclough's (2003) three dimensions of describing, interpreting, and explaining the text was followed. The study adopted a holistic approach to heritage as a conceptual framework whilst following social constructionism as the lens through which heritage was explored in the selected textbooks. The findings from this study concluded that although educational policy in the form of the National Curriculum Statement - NCS-History clearly stipulates the expectations to be achieved from the teaching and learning ofheritage at Grade 10 level, there are inconsistencies and contradictions at the level of implementation of the heritage outcome in the history textbooks. Key among the findings are the absence of representation of natural heritage, lack of clear conceptualisation of heritage, many diverse pedagogic approaches towards heritage depiction, a gender and race representation of heritage that suggests an inclination towards patriarchy and a desire to retain apartheid and colonial dogma respectively, and finally a confirmation of the tension in the heritage/history relationship. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The article presents a challenge to the History high schools' curriculum by depicting that among the secondary concepts currently used in the understanding of History in high schools in South Africa the socio-environmental concept has been ignored which poses a question of whether or not the high school History curriculum is complete. According to Jared Diamond, societies collapse due to diverse reasons but environment is key.² Hence D Woster,³ W Cronon4 and N Jacobs argue that the environment does not just represent a historical backdrop, but is an agent in its own right, providing a "material base for the power to dominate others" as well as the "power to endure domination".5 The case study of forced removals from Lady Selborne in 1961 and resettlement in Ga-Rankuwa in Pretoria demonstrates that forced removals from Lady Selborne did not only result in people losing their historical lands, material possessions, homes, history and their sense of being and connectedness but they also lost their attachment to their inheritance - the environment which resulted in their being apathetic towards environmental issues. Thus, the article proposes the inclusion of socio-environmental concepts in history which will provide a crucial step in terms of inculcating environmental activism and ethics among the youth of South Africa. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200007&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This article is a preliminary literature review undertaken for a proposed research project, surveying the field of research concerning the use of digitised video-testimonies with Shoah survivors in German history classrooms. It is set against the argument that up to now, the perpetration of Nazi atrocities has largely been treated with silence at the family level, and that this has negative psychosocial consequences. The literature review investigates to what extent educational DVDs with Shoah survivors could present an opportunity to break this silence and thus to restore generational relationships at the social level. These educational media allow learners to not only receive first-hand audio-visual accounts of what the Shoah witnesses experienced and thus to be emotionally and empathetically engaged with history learning. Learners are also made aware of the constructed nature of historical knowledge. As a result, they may begin to question how they know what they know, and what validity and consequences this knowing has. Existing pilot studies based on social-psychological analyses of learners' responses to the topic of Nazism, as well as a study about learners' interaction with the DVD series in Germany has shown that learners are interested in this topic, including the question of responsibility, but that they defy external pressure to feel guilty. They tend to develop sophisticated analytical competencies when their empathy is involved. The article could help teachers in other contexts, where sensitive topics need to be taught, to gain fresh perspectives on what to consider when teaching "difficult" content. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200008&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The way youth speak about the past can offer important clues to how they conceptualise and emotionally negotiate the present, specifically their sense of place in a changing world and the security of their future within it. This article considers the case of youth admitted to a university through a 'bridging' programme to reflect on dilemmas of identity and class mobility facing South African youth. Based on participant-observation, working with a world history curriculum designed for educationally disadvantaged students, the researcher illustrates how widely-circulating public discourses about race and history have infused the moral and generational pressures black students report to be a constant source of tension in their lives. Their social positioning on the cusp of upward social mobility in a nation characterised by persistent, racialised economic inequalities is experienced both as a privilege and a burden. Tensions between, on the one hand, a proclaimed loyalty to communitarian interests and identities and, on the other, a desire to showcase full participation in new cultures of consumer materialism are resolved through dichotomous ways of speaking about the past. In these narratives, "History" is the term utilised for speaking of a past of traumatic events, black victimisation and social legacies which must be overcome; "tradition" is a word invoked to empower a positive sense of continuity and to fix a seemingly more secure and generous location in the present. Both languages of the past offer narrative resources for students who are negotiating a rapidly changing national and global context. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200009&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The way youth speak about the past can offer important clues to how they conceptualise and emotionally negotiate the present, specifically their sense of place in a changing world and the security of their future within it. This article considers the case of youth admitted to a university through a 'bridging' programme to reflect on dilemmas of identity and class mobility facing South African youth. Based on participant-observation, working with a world history curriculum designed for educationally disadvantaged students, the researcher illustrates how widely-circulating public discourses about race and history have infused the moral and generational pressures black students report to be a constant source of tension in their lives. Their social positioning on the cusp of upward social mobility in a nation characterised by persistent, racialised economic inequalities is experienced both as a privilege and a burden. Tensions between, on the one hand, a proclaimed loyalty to communitarian interests and identities and, on the other, a desire to showcase full participation in new cultures of consumer materialism are resolved through dichotomous ways of speaking about the past. In these narratives, "History" is the term utilised for speaking of a past of traumatic events, black victimisation and social legacies which must be overcome; "tradition" is a word invoked to empower a positive sense of continuity and to fix a seemingly more secure and generous location in the present. Both languages of the past offer narrative resources for students who are negotiating a rapidly changing national and global context. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200010&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The decade of the 1960s in the United States is commonly viewed and taught as a series of traditional dichotomies, white vs. black, male vs. female, liberal vs. conservative, communist vs. anti-communist. Recent American scholarship on this period reveals a much more complex interplay of forces and movements. President John F. Kennedy's government was attacked for its policy toward the Soviet Union and communism in general, from both the right and the left. Political conservatism witnessed a revival at the expense of the then-dominant liberal culture. Martin Luther King promoted an economic and social agenda that went well beyond the vision of "IHave a Dream". Together, these forces enacted a second American "Civil War", which was a much more complex struggle than is commonly understood or taught. The History educator dealing with USA in the FET history curriculum is exposed to some interesting information to be utilised and debated in classrooms. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200011&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The "value" of a discipline, occasionally arouses debate. With History it's no different, and sometimes perhaps more challenging. As the general trend still indicates declining numbers in most provinces, Westerford High School in Cape Town displays an outstanding example of an institution with high success rates in History. From the Westerford High experience other schools are challenged to reconsider their status in the teaching of History and adapt where it is required. A personal view on why perhaps Westerford's success in History is exchanged. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200012&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The "value" of a discipline, occasionally arouses debate. With History it's no different, and sometimes perhaps more challenging. As the general trend still indicates declining numbers in most provinces, Westerford High School in Cape Town displays an outstanding example of an institution with high success rates in History. From the Westerford High experience other schools are challenged to reconsider their status in the teaching of History and adapt where it is required. A personal view on why perhaps Westerford's success in History is exchanged. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200013&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The "value" of a discipline, occasionally arouses debate. With History it's no different, and sometimes perhaps more challenging. As the general trend still indicates declining numbers in most provinces, Westerford High School in Cape Town displays an outstanding example of an institution with high success rates in History. From the Westerford High experience other schools are challenged to reconsider their status in the teaching of History and adapt where it is required. A personal view on why perhaps Westerford's success in History is exchanged. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200014&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The "value" of a discipline, occasionally arouses debate. With History it's no different, and sometimes perhaps more challenging. As the general trend still indicates declining numbers in most provinces, Westerford High School in Cape Town displays an outstanding example of an institution with high success rates in History. From the Westerford High experience other schools are challenged to reconsider their status in the teaching of History and adapt where it is required. A personal view on why perhaps Westerford's success in History is exchanged. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2223-03862013000200015&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The "value" of a discipline, occasionally arouses debate. With History it's no different, and sometimes perhaps more challenging. As the general trend still indicates declining numbers in most provinces, Westerford High School in Cape Town displays an outstanding example of an institution with high success rates in History. From the Westerford High experience other schools are challenged to reconsider their status in the teaching of History and adapt where it is required. A personal view on why perhaps Westerford's success in History is exchanged.