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.

I'm not shocked, but I do find it sad.

I'm 66 and was a member of the anti-apartheid movement for many years. My family were very political, and one of the first news events I remember was the Sharpeville massacre. I can recall my father's rage when the news was on the radio, and him explaining why it was so wrong, and that this was why we didn't buy fruit from South Africa.

I think it's important that children and young people learn about historical oppression and injustice. Those who cannot remember the past, and all that.

Families were divided over the rights and wrongs of it.

What exactly are the "rights" of apartheid ? I'd be curious to know. After all, balance and all that. There must have been some good ?

Otherwise how can we campaign against them?

If you are an activist, this topic will understandably be very close to your heart and it's good that you explained what it was to a member of your family.

Other issues will be of paramount importance to other people e.g. global warming and the melting of the poles, the obesity epidemic, eradication of illnesses/cancer, the blind, protection for the elderly, etc. On a national level UK education authorities will take all of these concerns into account and decide what must be included in the curriculum.

We have Black History Month in the UK, so that will make most people aware of the topic and they can research more about what happened in South Africa if they feel inclined to do it.

People always like to come onto MN and parade their superior knowledge

I must say, if you consider knowing about apartheid superior knowledge then you're a bit of a fuckwit, it only takes googling it and doesn't take superior levels of understanding. It was current affairs in the 90s. Mandela died in the last 10 years so a lot of stuff came back up with his death, in the news, on tv, and in film. I was born in the early 90s and I may have not covered it in depth in school, but it was on the news and on tv in my late teens.
I'm not saying if you didn't know about it prior to this thread then you are a fuckwit, if that is how this reads, but equally I am not parading superior knowledge given that it is actually quite recent.

@HelpSendGin

The history curriculum was changed for primary schools and so only covers European history in chronological order from the stone age. There are parts where people could cover it using comparisons, during black history month, or when studying a significant individual however this is at the discretion of the school and their curriculum design.

Don't get me started on the secondary literature texts....

That doesn’t seem like a step foreword. Was it Gove’s doing or has it happened since?

Mine did it in year 8 as part of history and in year 9 as part of English GCSE.

I’m 40 and wasn’t taught about it in school, I know about it now of course but 16yo me wouldn’t have. Not the whole thing anyway, I mean I knew about slavery and such but wouldn’t have known the word apartheid.

I'm in my 30s and never learnt about apartheid at school. As usual, it was left to black students to shoulder the burden of educating the rest of us on black heritage and history, warts and all. History class was about the war and public health in the 19th century.

I’m similar age to you and didn’t learn about it in school. My parents mentioned it in the context of them protesting about it.

I wasn't taught about apartheid at school but then it was in the news anyway since it was ending in my first year of Secondary School.

History is a massive subject and people can't know everything. I find it odd that when the transatlantic slave trade is taught/talked about they forget to mention Black slaves were sold to Europeans by the Black Africans themselves for the most part. I also find it odd almost no one has heard about the Barbary slave trade where millions of White Europeans were taken as slaves by Africans, but there you go, its all political isn't it?

I'm 51 and the only time Apartheid was mentioned in school was during an RE lesson.

We did Ag and Ind revolution and a tiny bit about suffragettes. For O levels we covered WWI and (a month before the exams because someone fucked up and didn't realise it was on the syllabus) WWII. For A level it was the cold war, Chinese revolution and the Japanese industrial revolution.

I love history and consider myself to have a fairly broad spread of knowledge but it's been predominantly gained through my own reading.

I'm 40 so aware of apartheid through the news, but I'm not sure it was something that ever came up in school so don't find it surprising that younger people who weren't born in the 90s aren't aware

Our English set text was Talking in Whispers so that dealt with Pinochet in South America

im 28 and have no idea what you are talking about

@TheMarzipanDildo the current curriculum was introduced in 2014. The narrow focus explain why we often teach other aspects through English (ie. immigration, apartheid, slavery are all things I’ve taught through the selection of texts in English).

@SerendipityJane

Families were divided over the rights and wrongs of it.

What exactly are the "rights" of apartheid ? I'd be curious to know. After all, balance and all that. There must have been some good ?

There wasn't any 'right' about it. However, lots of South African whites acquiesced out of fear of being massacred, and the government strongly encouraged this belief in them.

It's a shame that memory of apartheid is fading in the UK, and also what South Africans achieved in moving on from it without civil war: it was a phenomenal achievement.

I’ve just asked my 22-year-old if she knows what apartheid is. She said of course she does, and gave me a potted account. She didn’t do history GCSE at school. The popular Nought and Crosses trilogy books for teens would surely have brought the issue to life as well for younger people.

I'm in my 40s.

We couldn't study apartheid in history as it was still in place while we were at school so it was current affairs. The theories behind it were covered in other subject areas plus we had a few exiled South Africans, both teachers and pupils, in school.

Also didn't study the holocaust or the World Wars at secondary school. Though everyone was aware of it and those of us who did one History GCSE syllabus studied Germany from 1919 to 1939, The Russian Revolution covering Russia up until 1939, The Cold War and the break up for the British Empire from 1946 to 1960.

I'm 43 and wasn't taught about apartheid at school that I can recall - but I knew about it as it was heavily in the news when I was young as it was in the lead up to it ending.
We did cover slavery though in Eng Lit.

My family lived in South Africa for almost a decade before I was born they moved there in the 1950’s. I’m in my fifties and a lot younger than my siblings, one of my sisters was born there. They left because of escalating violence in the very early sixties. My Mother was also worried that in a few years my brother would be drafted in to the army, he was around 15 when they left.

I have heard many tales over the years of how beautiful it was and their voyage there and back, of chameleons in the house to catch insects and how my Mother chopped a bird eating spider in half with a spade that got in the house. How baboons came down off the mountain one time to raid all the bins.

She also talked about the political situation and what happened to the family. There are many stories but these snippets are the ones that stick with me.

She helped take a man to hospital that was dumped on the side of the road that had both of his hands cut off. She was prosecuted for letting her maid sit in the front of her car. A girl was snatched and gang raped and left for dead in my sisters class who was about 11 at the time. Her car was surrounded in a protest once and she said my sister who was a toddler at the time was waving and smiling at the rioters and she thinks that saved them.

My brother who has now sadly died and my eldest sister spoke quite good Afrikaans and used to sing nursery rhymes to me in it as a small child.

Mother would never buy anything South African and berated the local grocer for stocking Cape grapes once.

What exactly are the "rights" of apartheid ? I'd be curious to know. After all, balance and all that. There must have been some good ?

There wasn't any good

I personally think a lot of responsibility for this sort of thing is down to parents. I taught my children about apartheid when they were quite young but then we had family connections to South Africa. I tackled a lot of difficult subjects by reading books and watching films with them and then critically thinking about and discussing the issues that arose. It was a good way of introducing them to different cultures and to the history of different regions of the world.

The school curriculum approach is to separate subjects, history from English literature for example, causing a disconnect that is difficult for some children to overcome. Reading a fiction book in an English lesson, often the children don't grasp how much of the background is real and what is fiction. Even if they do understand, often the English teacher is not in a good position to link it to the social and political history of the period whether due to either knowledge or time restrictions. Likewise, history classes do not delve into the literature that may provide a better insight to the social history, etc.

What exactly are the "rights" of apartheid ?

I phrased that badly. I meant the rights and wrongs of boycotting sport in South Africa. It was a massive, massive issue. Should the English cricket team play in South Africa? Etc. South Africa was a pariah country in much of the world. Similar as arguments today about should people trade with, go on holiday to or buy products from Myanmar or North Korea.

And I'm actually a person that quite likes history so watch a lot of films and documentary type shows to learn more. Does anyone know if there is a relevant one to learn more about apartheid?

Not a documentary but a book, "When she was white" by Judith Stone.

It's the true story of Sandra Lang, her parents were Apartheid supporting africanas, everything was fine until she went to school.

There her dark skin and afro hair was a problem, the school was whites only and they didn't believe she was white.

The book talks about her life but also the changes in SA law and how people were 'classified' so Sandra Lang in her life was classified as black, white and coloured at different times.

The book continues with the dismantling of apartheid and talks about the 'education' adults (particularly white) had to undergo in the work place. One white man was horrified that he would have to wash his hands in the same sink as a black man, the trainer asked who washed his sink at him and it was a black maid, it had not occurred to him that at home he washed his hands in a basin washed by a black person.

The different attempts to classify people and the tests applied would be laughable if the subject was not so serious.

If DNA testing had been available then apartheid could not have continued.

I think there's a big difference between WW2 which is still very much in your face and by definition was the whole world involved, and apartheid which was only one country.

Hmmm but SA history is quite intertwined with British history, concentration camps (segregated by race by the British) the Boer Wars, the restrictions on black people owning land imposed by Britain and the Netherlands, SA also played a part in WWII, well parts, different depending on skin colour.

I think schools and the curriculum need to avoid politicising the teaching of history as much as possible, i.e. there should be some objective criteria for choosing the topics. For example, black history might be really important to you, but for others the partition of India and Pakistan might be really important. Or the holocaust, or the oppression of women, or the Cold War... For you, black history in S Africa might be important but for others the UK involvement in slavery might be more relevant.

Personally, I feel that history as taught in UK schools ought to focus on the UK and Europe. There is plenty of oppression to teach about here!

@WhiskyXray

My KS2 child learnt about it. "Journey to Joburg" was a set text and a discussion of apartheid accompanied that. They have also learnt a lot about famous black people for Black History Month, albeit with a weirdly American focus- Rosa Parks, MLK, Michelle Obama and others.

I think that black history is often taught with a very American focus, unsurprising because of the consequences of slavery, but it does mean that it's easy to get a distorted view about what was happening in other countries too. I would have thought it came up in other contexts, like learning about Nelson Mandela.

I am so old that apartheid was still in existence when I was at school and it was often incorporated into the curriculum. However, the legacy of apartheid still exists today so it's wrong to see it as just being about history. The shock when the South African Quinton de Kock refused to take the knee at the cricket yesterday (although he has since apologised) is evidence of its ongoing effects.