To be shocked that 16 year old didn't know about apartheid

[biddlybop]

Recently, I was having a conversation with a teen in the family and mentioned apartheid (think we were talking about films and books based on true events). They asked what apartheid was. I explained, and they had never heard of it.

I was genuinely shocked. We were taught about it in school - in both history, and English. I'm 30, so I wasn't educated decades ago.

Is this not in the curriculum anymore, or is it just her school? I think it's really important that young people are taught about these events, especially as racism is still such a problem.

Late 30s. Never taught it at school though have vague recollection of Mandela release on tv

My parents taught me

School did ww1 and ww2

Again, in the Brexit debate almost everyone outside the UK believes that the UK's position is weak, and that it strengthened the UK's hand to surrender some sovereignty in return for a say in the direction of a much larger, more powerful, entity

Otherpeoples I'm not saying that one has to ignore feedback or opinions from outside the UK, but other nations do not have to act in our best interests. Why should we take their views as gospel? What you seem to be suggesting is that we had better toe the line or else.

Your and others' similar posts (as I don't mean to put you on the spot) relay a feeling of detachment. Very rarely someone with any deep sense of belonging or loyalty to their land and fellow countrymen would express opinions in this way.

If we want our country to successfully navigate the challenges ahead, do you not think it's rather tone deaf and disingenuous to suggest that we need to encourage negativity and self-flagellation for the sake of it and start to focus on events that didn't even take place here like apartheid? How is that a good idea?

The OP has made a good job of fuelling division on a forum, do you think replicating this IRL and amongst our children will help us move forward in any way? We don't need this now. The information on any historic event is available for anyone who cares to look for it, we have more important tasks to attend to now.

Ha haaa another one for only Russian history!?

• but I do know about apartheid

There's not enough time in all the years of education to teach everything that's considered important IMO. By the time we've agreed all DC need to read and write competently (a benchmark that is too often missed IMO) the Dc are older and starting to be critical.

I can never forget the afternoon I took DS to Waterloo, and the diorama of the battle (which was only won by Wellington thanks to the arrival of German reinforcements -- Blucher, IIRC) was represented as Napoleon's triumph. The political lens does odd things to history.

Nobody recalls that Stalin murdered at least 12 million small-holder farmers (the kulaks), and killed Russia's ability to feed its population for 40 years. People have forgotten that Mao ordered the civil service onto the land to dig during the Cultural Revolution to equalise society. Or that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge violently dismembered the Vietnamese social order. None achieved an equal society, which I remember being the avowed intent.

YANBU. Had a conversation with my son about this when he about 14 - he didn't know. I did find it strange given that it was so recent and the significance of race/colour in the present is so highlighted by BLM. Wouldn't apartheid be central to education about this? I think that the historical canon should be reviewed, just as the English one should. Of course there are endless facts and possibilities about what could be taught at schools but more emphasis should be placed on the events that have an impact on our relationships in the present, as well as our economies. Postcolonial history is sidelined as ideological, but isn't history all ideological, including how we select what is taught.

Oddly, because I live in a very "White" area of the UK... that is extremely rural... where most people have families that have lived locally for several generations, it's not an issue. People from cities visit on holiday, shudder slightly at the idea of living without Deliveroo, and go home again. A few come and stay and get stuck in with the rest of us peasants. They are welcomed.

@Lockheart

I'm in my 30s and I don't recall being taught about apartheid or slavery.

We were mostly taught about WW1 and 2, and the Russian Revolution.

This ⬆️⬆️⬆️ We were also only taught these things at A level. If you didn't take History as a gcse subject your education basically ended at Queen Victoria.

My kids school shared a list of books they were going to read in form. The only women were black Americans and the only black people were American women. I do worry that it's too easy to use American literature to tick the 'black' or 'women' token box when actually it would make more sense to cover British colonialism in India or Africa. The only black kids at our school (in a very white part of the UK) have come from Africa, not from the US and there are far more people of Indian extraction. Our involvement in apartheid would make more sense to study than segregation in the US. Why have I only learnt about the Biafran War in my 50s (thanks to Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi) but learnt about black slaves in the US at 6 (thanks to Roots which of course suggests the UK still had slavery in the 1850s)?

I do think that the varied experiences of colonialism (rather than segregation in the southern states) should be covered more than it is in the English and Scottish history curriculums. I did history Higher in Scotland in the 1980s and while half the course was European history we learnt nothing about British colonialism apart from the Glaswegian Tobacco Lords and the Glasgow cotton trade a century later - no mention of slavery in either case.

Read this thread and asked my 18 year old ,who is well read well educated ,I am always amazed at the stuff he knows ,until now
he had no idea... but knows of Nelson Mandela ,and De Kirk
how is that possible

Some things we have to teach at home.
We’re not taught about the Highland Clearances or the then ban on speaking Gaelic, the Irish Potato Famine. Or the British troops coming to Glasgow to remove the Scottish troops to barracks. The English - British groups, were then told by Winston Churchill to fire at the hungriest of Glasgow residents who were starving.
Some Irish were sold as slaves, sectarianism etc.
Do we hear of this in British history - no!
Lots we are not taught.

Don’t you lot talk to your children about important stuff; history, current affairs, environmental issues, human rights and politics?
Or do you rely on schools for everything from toilet training to safe sex instruction?

Only so many hours in the school day, and every month there’s another thing that ‘Ought to be taught in schools’
Parents need to step up more.

Slavery was prohibited in England after 1807. I don't think many countries banned it earlier (but could be wrong); NZ had barely been discovered and was not fully explored then. The past was a much harder, nastier place than most of us can imagine now, and the rules we hold dear today just didn't apply.

It's impossible to study everything in history, which is why the history syllabus is as much about how to analyse and understand history, and hopefully inspire an interest in history, as it is about learning facts.

There just isn't enough time to cram everything in in the time available. However, there is no reason why people shouldn't carry on learning about history in the decades after they leave school. It's not as though there aren't hundreds of tv and radio programmes, podcasts, films and books to learn from.

@EllenTwoShoes, I think there's a very fine line to be trodden here, in between acknowledging inward migration as mainly desired and desirable, and remembering that the UK has been at the leading edge of progressive thought since about 1700. Without denying that the UK has often got things wrong (often important ones), it has IMO more often got them almost right rather than mostly wrong.

Perhaps the selection process for the curriculum should be framed in a different way so that the focus is more on the injustices rather than the victories. There as so many facts - it is about the selection of facts taught. Many posters on here have talked about genocides throughout history. Apartheid and the Holocaust in my British, Western view are the seminal 20th century lenses through which other injustices could be understood or taught. Maybe that way our children would grow up having more empathy and kindness? Not knocking this generation - they are super aware of environmental issues and can teach us a thing or two, but sometimes I wonder if the reason that woke culture is accused of being shallow and self righteous is because of this lack? They can be so mean too!

Slavery was prohibited in England after 1807. I don't think many countries banned it earlier

The slave trade was banned in the British Empire in 1807 but slavery wasn't outlawed in the Empire until 1834, and there was then a transition period, and reparations to the slave owners that was only paid off in the 21st century. Denmark was the first European country to abolish the slave trade in 1792, the last country in the world to ban slavery was Mauritania in 1981.

Perhaps the selection process for the curriculum should be framed in a different way so that the focus is more on the injustices rather than the victories

Who in their right mind would want to do that? It will not lead to more 'empathy' and 'kindness', it will encourage further division and hold us back

I’m not sure history lessons are really the place to focus on this. History lessons are seemingly becoming increasingly politicised. I think history in the U.K. should focus largely on British history, in a neutral, non-judgemental way. Skills such as critical thinking, not being anachronistic, learning to formulate clear balanced arguments, analysing both the good and bad, how things were viewed from different perspectives etc should be the skill focus. Pupils should be taught how a wide variety of past events have shaped today. The rise and fall of empires. It’s impossible to teach all of history so it’s importyto equip students with the skills to actively understand the boys of the past most relevant to them themselves.

History is so wide, apartheid is a minuscule event in history, yes it might be important to certain groups, and fit in with current focuses, but in shaping the U.K. and wider world fairly small. There are 100s of other historical events which are ignored which actually were very important. Tell people there was crusades in what is now southern France Christians v Christian not Muslim people are confused. Explain about the history of expulsion of Jews which went on for centuries in Europe and they might understand both the holocaust and the Israel issue a little bit more. Tell them on sheer numbers Stalin was probably worse than Hitler, explain about the true nature of the Reformation and witch hunts we would probably learn a lot more about the dangers of current society. History as a subject has been increasingly sidelined for the importance of STEM subjects, but without understanding our past we can’t understand our present and shape our future.

Apartheid was definitely not part of my curriculum. Personally I think history is a terrible subject at school. It should be general world history instead of what day month year was a king born!!!

I just asked my two. My 14 year old knew what it was but my 15 year old didn’t. Both say they’ve never learned it in school.

Early 40s, and I was never taught about it in school.

I’m 49 and learnt nothing about this at school in history either GCSE or A -Level. Not sure if my daughters have either.

@MrsFirth2006

I’m 49 and learnt nothing about this at school in history either GCSE or A -Level. Not sure if my daughters have either.

It wasn't history when you were at school. Apartheid in South Africa didn't end until 1994.

My kids' school's key stage 3 history curriculum has a module on the Civil Rights movement which compares and contrasts events in UK and US history. Apartheid is mentioned as a topic to research for an optional extension task. They also do a module on genocide, covering Rwanda, Cambodia, as well as the Holocaust. They can't cover everything, but do encourage them to read widely. If teenagers have gaps in their knowledge it is as much their parents' (and their own) responsibility to fill them as their teachers'.

XingMing

Slavery was abolished in Britain and the empire in 1833, not 1807. That is earlier than most slaving European powers except, I think, Spain. In 1807 we banned the trading of slaves, which is not the same as ending slavery. I think we were second only to Portugal on banning the trading of slaves. We were at the earlier end of both but weren’t first in either. The 1833 Act was part of a wave of abolition legislation sweeping across European powers in the early to mid nineteenth century. The Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and French were implementing similar measures at the time, some slightly earlier than us and some slightly later.