Choices and Human Behaviour in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s
Shikaya and Facing History and Ourselves
Choices and Human Behaviour in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s
The third Facing the Past seminar was led by Janine Kaptein, an experienced and inspiring teacher. Janine has been part of the Facing the Past programme for many years, and spent six months sabbatical working with Shikaya. Janine teaches at ID Mkize High School and her approach to teaching and use of sources to engage with human behaviour and choice with learners is innovative and engaging.
This seminar explored the choices that were made when apartheid laws were introduced. A number of issues emerged from this session – the teaching of apartheid history is a complex and challenging process. Some of the challenges mentioned by the teachers are the negative emotions that pupils feel about the past: sadness, anger, guilt, disbelief; continuing racialisation – the challenges of past racial inequality and present-day social inequality; their pupils’ inability to understand how ‘we’ could have accepted it; the legacy of parents’ thinking on their children; stereotyping of people from the past/adults: black people victims – white people perpetrators, instead of hearing the ‘multiple voices’.
Teacher Responses:
" My experiences, using theories of racism made me discover apartheid and its origin. I never understood apartheid in the manner I was made to understand it by the theories of racism. I never understood the motives of the architects. I always believed that they were protecting their group from other groups.
Teaching apartheid without the background of racism as a theory would be very difficult. When I started working in 2006 I was fortunate to have attended a Facing the Past workshop and I faced the class having been prepared. My interpretations were making it easy for learners."
" I have learned to adopt and develop various ways of teaching. This has made my lesson very interesting to learners"
" These seminars keep us teachers abreast and in line with the new curriculum."