UNIDAD FORMATIVA 1
3 Evaluación programática y operativa en la instrucción del Yoga
The apparent abandonment of the narrative style of school history education in favour of teaching History as a mode of inquiry has not been without its critics. It has been argued that school history should encourage some interest in and understanding of the past and that a ‘history as narrative’ approach should not simply be abandoned for an enquiry-based approach. 69 Ibid., p. 12. 70 Ibid., p. 13. 71 Ibid., p. 14.
While the current approach helps learners to understand that the making of history is a human construction and that texts need to be read with a critical eye, care needs be taken that all that is good in the narrative approach is not lost.72
In 2007 a survey was conducted by Bertram at three KwaZulu-Natal secondary schools to determine how learners were exposed to contextual source-based questions and what skills answering them required. One of the target schools was in fact a traditionally black secondary school. The findings were that the way in which sources were used did not require learners to display the insights and skills of historians. Learners were not required to read the sources in an in-depth way, to look for bias, nuance, context, author or context of a source.73 Source-based tasks degenerated into simple visual comprehension exercises. An analysis conducted of tests written by Grade 10 learners in 2006 at the traditionally black secondary school surveyed revealed that one was a simple comprehension exercise and the other a test involving a list of recall questions.74
My own experience in teaching FET history at a black secondary school leads me to agree with Bertram’s sober findings about the misuse of the source-based method of teaching and assessing school history. Source-based assessments tend to be little more than simple visual comprehensions. Like most of my history teaching colleagues, I do not encourage learners to answer the source-based questions in depth, but rather to answer the questions in a simple point- by-point format so as to be as close as possible to the anticipated marking memoranda which are used to assess the learners’ performance. Matriculation examiners in all subjects are not renowned for the latitude of interpretation applied to learners’ scripts. Since the FET matriculation examinations are now assessed nationally, the marking memoranda used to assess them have quite understandably become more rigid, allowing for less divergence of interpretation. The reality is that within their schools, educators are judged on Grade 12 results. As was often the case with the old-style narrative history education favoured by South African education departments, so too the new source-based FET history is also liable to be taught
72 C. Bertram, ‘Doing History?: An Analysis of Grade 10 Assessment Tasks in the New History Curriculum’,
Paper presented at the South African Society for History Teaching Conference, 2007.
73
Ibid., p. 11.
mainly with an eye to coaching learners in examination-answering techniques, with all the negative connotations which this implies.
5.8 Conclusion
Since the demise of apartheid history education the subject has undergone great change at secondary school level. The philosophy and rationale underlying the subject as well as the content and teaching method have all changed. Although many academics and history educators themselves have been critical of certain aspects of the final FET and GET product which had its first implementation in Grade 12 in 2008, there is universal consensus that history as a school subject is founded on a much more sound basis than was the case during the time of apartheid education. Secondary school history now boasts a broader syllabus and appears to be generally interesting to the learners who take the subject. African history is given a place of greater prominence. The open-minded emphasis on heritage issues is a pleasing improvement on the rather one-sided cultural emphasis which many felt had characterised the South African history offered in the school history syllabi of the past. Less blatant bias is present in the school history textbooks which present the content than was the case in the past, despite the feeling of some educators that the old subjectivity of apartheid history has simply been replaced by a new subjectivity which favours the new political order. GET and FET history may be criticised on technical and educational grounds, but it is clear that it is no longer founded on the presumption that school history is a form of blatant propaganda, or a tool for political indoctrination.
Despite the positive evolution of school history education, some negative perceptions of the subject among educators and academics still persist. Teaching in most secondary schools is still examination oriented. Assessment methods have been criticised for being simple exercises in comprehension which do not attempt to measure any deeper understanding of the context which surrounds topics.
Despite the confusion which the educational changes have created among so many educators it is clear that the sweeping changes in the approach to history education in South African secondary schools have clearly ushered in new perceptions of the subject – mostly positive – on the part of
educators and learners alike. It will be demonstrated however, that these fresh positive perceptions about history have not been enough to prevent the subject slipping into oblivion at most black secondary schools.