The purpose of history education should not be to cultivate a particular political consciousness or identity. Rather, its purpose is to equip students with the tools necessary to understand the past.
Spot-on. And VERY timeously too. Governments, however, very often can't resist using history teaching for propaganda purposes. I am very glad that an institution like yours will be watching the history teaching space very closely. We as members of the public and parents and grandparents should also make our voices heard. I am also highly in favour of us as parents and grandparents supplementing history curricula by our own teachings. Only a Zulu or Xhosa, or Afrikaner for that matter, can really convey the history of its own people in the type of depth that I think is necessary. Unless one is no longer interested in ones own roots, of course.
Tragically, some people with alterior motives try to twist attempts to keep ones own children grounded in their own cultural heritages as anti whatever. My children and grandchildren will not, for instance, be anti a future history which teaches about the united South Africa of the future. But my emphasis is on FUTURE, since there is no united South Africa in our distant or recent history. We as a nation are work in progress.
We try — or at least must try — to see if we can get the rainbow of Archbishop Tutu and the reconciliated nation which Madiba tried so hard to create, back again. But for that to happen, at least 20 years of governance in South Africa which caused the opposite of reconciliation, must be eradicated. For that we need a much better government treating all citizens the way Madiba envisaged: no super group of cadres above the law; and no citizen receiving treatment which differentiate between people on the basis of skin colour, tribal affinity, or some other useless excuse to justify discrimination...
I must begin by thanking you, Piet, for always taking the time to engage with our work on the Rational Standard. Indeed, very few people do, so your thoughtful and detailed comments do not go unnoticed.
For me, the underlying problem is a political system in which power is concentrated in the hands of a few people. When we centralise political authority, we inevitably deprive individuals and communities of the liberty to govern themselves and make independent decisions. This affects everything from economic policy to education policy, which is the focus of this discussion.
State schooling, as you correctly note, is a mechanism that governments around the world have used to design curricula that advance their own values and political agendas. In South Africa, the National Party did exactly that when it was in power, and the ANC has been no different.
I am much younger than you, but I do not have a particularly romantic view of our country's past. I will not say much about the late Archbishop, except that he was a great man of great moral conviction who only began to see the ANC for what it truly is during the final years of his life.
Mandela, on the other hand, is a more complicated figure. While he undoubtedly possessed more integrity than many within today's ANC, he remained a pragmatic socialist and played a central role in ushering in a new political dispensation that did not fundamentally restructure the architecture of political power in South Africa. Over time, that political dispensation enabled the ANC to pursue the National Democratic Revolution and contributed to many of the problems we face today, including persistently high unemployment, poor educational outcomes, and the progressive criminalisation of the state.
I want to reiterate that we can only begin solving these problems by addressing their underlying cause: the centralisation of political power.
South Africa needs a genuinely decentralised system of governance. Every issue we have discussed here, Piet - including Section 235 and the principle of self-determination, which is itself increasingly under threat - is ultimately vulnerable because those in Pretoria seek to centralise authority and control every sphere of society.
Ayanda, it is always a pleasure reading you guys. I also find it dissapointing when I get few or no comments on my articles. I have tried several times to get people more actively involved, since that is the way we learn from each other. I will continue doing it.
Your arguments are well-founded in the tradition of classical liberalism. The dead hand of government is just that: dead! And eventually it kills all opposition and suppresses initiative. Strong centralised government is indeed anethema to individual and group freedoms.
A very well written and well argued article ... the discipline required for being a genuine historian is not trivial and this article presents the challenges of producing history versus preferred narratives.
That said it is a knife edge to navigate, subjectivism can arise from any angle ...
Spot-on. And VERY timeously too. Governments, however, very often can't resist using history teaching for propaganda purposes. I am very glad that an institution like yours will be watching the history teaching space very closely. We as members of the public and parents and grandparents should also make our voices heard. I am also highly in favour of us as parents and grandparents supplementing history curricula by our own teachings. Only a Zulu or Xhosa, or Afrikaner for that matter, can really convey the history of its own people in the type of depth that I think is necessary. Unless one is no longer interested in ones own roots, of course.
Tragically, some people with alterior motives try to twist attempts to keep ones own children grounded in their own cultural heritages as anti whatever. My children and grandchildren will not, for instance, be anti a future history which teaches about the united South Africa of the future. But my emphasis is on FUTURE, since there is no united South Africa in our distant or recent history. We as a nation are work in progress.
We try — or at least must try — to see if we can get the rainbow of Archbishop Tutu and the reconciliated nation which Madiba tried so hard to create, back again. But for that to happen, at least 20 years of governance in South Africa which caused the opposite of reconciliation, must be eradicated. For that we need a much better government treating all citizens the way Madiba envisaged: no super group of cadres above the law; and no citizen receiving treatment which differentiate between people on the basis of skin colour, tribal affinity, or some other useless excuse to justify discrimination...
I must begin by thanking you, Piet, for always taking the time to engage with our work on the Rational Standard. Indeed, very few people do, so your thoughtful and detailed comments do not go unnoticed.
For me, the underlying problem is a political system in which power is concentrated in the hands of a few people. When we centralise political authority, we inevitably deprive individuals and communities of the liberty to govern themselves and make independent decisions. This affects everything from economic policy to education policy, which is the focus of this discussion.
State schooling, as you correctly note, is a mechanism that governments around the world have used to design curricula that advance their own values and political agendas. In South Africa, the National Party did exactly that when it was in power, and the ANC has been no different.
I am much younger than you, but I do not have a particularly romantic view of our country's past. I will not say much about the late Archbishop, except that he was a great man of great moral conviction who only began to see the ANC for what it truly is during the final years of his life.
Mandela, on the other hand, is a more complicated figure. While he undoubtedly possessed more integrity than many within today's ANC, he remained a pragmatic socialist and played a central role in ushering in a new political dispensation that did not fundamentally restructure the architecture of political power in South Africa. Over time, that political dispensation enabled the ANC to pursue the National Democratic Revolution and contributed to many of the problems we face today, including persistently high unemployment, poor educational outcomes, and the progressive criminalisation of the state.
I want to reiterate that we can only begin solving these problems by addressing their underlying cause: the centralisation of political power.
South Africa needs a genuinely decentralised system of governance. Every issue we have discussed here, Piet - including Section 235 and the principle of self-determination, which is itself increasingly under threat - is ultimately vulnerable because those in Pretoria seek to centralise authority and control every sphere of society.
Ayanda, it is always a pleasure reading you guys. I also find it dissapointing when I get few or no comments on my articles. I have tried several times to get people more actively involved, since that is the way we learn from each other. I will continue doing it.
Your arguments are well-founded in the tradition of classical liberalism. The dead hand of government is just that: dead! And eventually it kills all opposition and suppresses initiative. Strong centralised government is indeed anethema to individual and group freedoms.
A very well written and well argued article ... the discipline required for being a genuine historian is not trivial and this article presents the challenges of producing history versus preferred narratives.
That said it is a knife edge to navigate, subjectivism can arise from any angle ...