History learners in black secondary schools, at least since the 1950s, appear to have been, ideologically speaking, more progressive than were the majority of their history educators. It was learners rather than educators who played the major roles in the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and in the school boycotts and unrest of the mid 1980s.The perceptions of and the value which learners attached to the study of school history appear to have been largely different to those of their educators.
In the section of his study which deals with the role of history education in black secondary schools during the period 1954–1961, Zwane implies that black secondary school learners were averse to the study of South African history, reacting against an entrenched white perspective in the history textbooks which were used. Perceived negative portrayals of black people and their history served to create negative attitudes toward the subject among black learners.
Zwane notes that from 1962 it was clear to many that the dignity of the black man was being degraded by the government policy of ‘influx control’ being practised. This was but one government practice which did not measure up to the principles of democracy which were outlined in history textbooks at the time. Black secondary school history students were alive to the many contradictions between what they were taught and the reality of life in South Africa.67 Motshabi, writing about history education among black learners in the Eastern Cape, noted that in her experience, ‘Bantu pupils are tetchy and alert to a new political and national consciousness which is related to the upsurge of nationalism in Africa’.68
67
Zwane, ‘An Examination of the Position and Role of History’, pp. 46–52.
Further evidence of a developed level of political awareness among black secondary school learners during the apartheid period is furnished by Maree who spent a period of time in April 1975 observing mainly history and social studies lessons in Soweto secondary schools. She relates that on occasions she was questioned by learners, about herself or South Africa. Maree found many of the questions to be quite searching. Some examples include: ‘If you are a South African, why do you live in Britain?’ and ‘How must we answer questions in the exam? For example, if we are talking about the Eastern Frontier must we say Boers and Kaffirs, rather than blacks and whites so that they don’t think that we are politically minded?’ On the topic of the French Revolution, their educator was asked questions such as, ‘How can the rich have no power? Were palace servants paid? Couldn’t the King imprison the thinkers? From which estate came the soldiers?’ Maree concluded that these kinds of questions revealed a high degree of political awareness among learners.
On the basis of her research project, Maree noted that by 1975, Bantu Education had not been able to blind secondary school learners from the experience of their lives in Soweto, or from having a sense of a history of oppression. Black learners in secondary schools were aware of their exploitation, and the educational system had not been successful in creating a sense of acceptance of their position in society. Learners were becoming aware of the unfairness of the system.69
Maree’s research also demonstrates that black secondary school learners had perceived that two kinds of school history co-existed in their classrooms: the kind of history which needed to be learnt and regurgitated for the purposes of passing examinations and the kind of history which was not associated with government propaganda. This perception which black secondary school learners of history held was apparent in the responses which I obtained from black history educators in Mpumalanga who had themselves experienced history education as learners during the apartheid era.
One respondent noted that when he was a history learner during the early 1970s he and his classmates formed study groups of their own so as to study beyond the bounds of the syllabus.
The syllabus was learnt to facilitate examination success and the learners in the study groups shared study material about history and politics amongst themselves.70 Another educator related that as a learner his own history educator had taken care to point out the differences between the different versions of history presented in the syllabi and textbooks and what had really happened.71
Black secondary school learners also tended to view history as a negative and boring exercise. Nuxumalo noted how learners (during the 1970s) harboured a negative attitude toward history as they entered higher education. As well as believing the subject to be an exercise in indoctrination, they ‘view it mainly as a chronological exercise in remembering dates, events and places.’72
The scepticism evident in the above reactions is reflected by Ashley who notes that the South African history learnt by learners at black secondary schools became an emotive and sensitive issue as leaders of banned organisations were either detained or had fled the country. Learners were developing an interest in the activities of political leaders, and as they did so, the Eurocentric South African history became an area of doubt.73 Black secondary school learners were beginning to question that all the facts which related to black people in South African history were in fact true. Zwane points to the development of a negative attitude among learners to the subject content. He notes that this was one of the many factors which contributed to the rejection of Bantu Education in 1976. South African history as taught in black secondary schools lost credibility among learners. Zwane notes that it even evoked hatred for those who were perceived to be perpetuating the subordination of black people.74
70 Educator’s questionnaire, Response 1.
The negative views which black secondary school learners took towards their history education increased and intensified after the Soweto Uprising of 1976. An article in the Financial Mail of 5 August 1977 reflects the views of black secondary school learners about the South African history which they were being
71 Educator’s questionnaire, Response 2.
72 Nuxumalo, ‘Sociological Significance of the Teaching of History’, p. 205. 73
M. Ashley, Ideologies and Schooling in South Africa (Cape Town, 1989) p. 24, as quoted by Zwane, ‘An Examination of the Position and Role of History’, p. 63.
taught: ‘The courses ignore our views of history and stress things like Bantustans which we reject.’75
As opposed to some expectations, the enactment of Act 90 of 1979 which introduced the new Department of Education and Training did not soften the learners’ rejection of the school system. Rather, the 1980 school boycotts in black townships as well as wider political and social unrest followed. In fact, Zwane makes the case that the attitudes of learners within black secondary schools to South African history hardened after the post-1976 Bantu Education Department ‘reforms’.76 Black learners perceived South African history as being biased and prejudiced against black people who were depicted as politically immature. The content of the history syllabi which was taught at black schools demotivated both educators and learners studying South African history.77
Respondents whom Zwane interviewed corroborated the viewpoint that most of the sections of South African history taught at black secondary schools reflected a ‘white’ perspective of South Africa’s history, showing how white people were responsible for most significant historical development. The idea that ‘exaggerated notions and interpretations’ of the Afrikaners were taught to white learners was widely held by blacks.78
By the 1980s, Lekgoathi identified ‘a rising tide of student militancy’ even in secondary schools in rural Lebowa, in the present-day Limpopo province. Learners began to seriously challenge the moral authority of their educators. It was not rare for learners to react violently against educators they regarded as ‘sell-outs’.79
75
Financial Mail, 5 August 1977, as quoted by Zwane, ‘An Examination of the Position and Role of History’,
Holden and Mathabatha, writing of the politics of resistance in the former Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga), identify an increase in learner militancy in the province after the Soweto Uprising of 1976. Interestingly, the influence of history as a subject and of history educators at secondary schools is noted as a factor which at times encouraged learner militancy. Several political activists are mentioned who owed their subsequent
p. 90.
76 Zwane, ‘An Examination of the Position and Role of History’, p. 91.
77 Ibid., pp. 97, 103. The question of the content of history syllabi being taught at black secondary schools
during the apartheid era is examined elsewhere in this dissertation.
78
Ibid., pp. 113, 141.
involvement in the liberation struggle to the impression which a history educator made upon them.80
Black history educators from Nkangala who had themselves experienced the social and educational unrest of the 1980s recorded the following about how learners’ perceptions of history education changed during this turbulent time:
The unrest was some kind of enlightenment to many learners. Most have now a passion to know more about what happened as well as about roles and people who brought about change…81
This respondent claimed that one positive aspect of the 1980s unrest was that it did spark a curiosity in learners to know their history. Most of the other respondents did not however view the results of the 1980s unrest for history education within black secondary schools in so positive a light. Learners appeared to have lost interest in schooling and no longer valued or upheld history education.82 Learners began to resist and question sections of the history syllabus83 and developed an open dislike for ‘Afrikaner history’.84
The perceptions which black secondary school learners held of history cannot fail to have been influenced by an education which from 1976, took place in a context of social turmoil and political unrest. Hartshorne refers to the disintegration of learning which occurred during periods of protest and revolt through 1976–1980, 1984–1986 and from 1988 onward, and learner reactions to school authority during these periods. As the learning environment began to deteriorate, first in urban and then rural schools, when calls to return to school were accepted, there were still no guarantees that learning would in fact take place. Learners came to school at various times, left when they wanted to, brought no books to school, refused to take tests or to do homework, and generally rejected any form of authority. In referring to black youth who had a misplaced confidence in what they could achieve on their own without the assistance of educators, Hartshorne refers to the lost generation of secondary school youth, who, ‘had been the
80 Holden and Mathabatha, ‘The Politics of Resistance’, pp. 405, 408, 415. 81 Educator’s questionnaire, Response 1.
82
Educator’s questionnaire, Response 5.
83
Educator’s questionnaire, Response 6.
leaders of the political struggle in 1976–1980 [and] more and more became the victims of that struggle’.85
4.6 Conclusion
It is clear that by the 1990s as the grip of the apartheid government loosened, the perceptions of learners towards history education became more positive. The 1991 HSRC research on history education in South Africa clearly reflects this.86 A freer political climate which enabled more positive perceptions of history to develop at black secondary schools is reflected by an educator who reported that from the late 1980s, ‘I began to lose fear of the secret police because of the rate of which change was moving…’87
85
Hartshorne, Crisis and Challenge, p. 80.
The promise of new life for all and the development of fresh, positive perceptions of secondary school history which seem to have appeared by the 1990s will however be shown to have been short lived as improved syllabi, textbooks and teaching methods did little to counteract a growing trend toward pragmatic materialism encouraged by a technologically oriented society which has not set a high premium upon humanistic education.
86
Van der Merwe, et al., An Empirical Investigation into the Teaching of History.