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.

In lots of schools now students can drop History at the end of Year 8 so it’s perfectly possible to have huge gaps. As other posters have said even if you do GCSE it depends on the course. There’s a lot of hugely important stuff and schools can’t do it all.

Yes it is wrong that people don't know about relatively recent history. But what shall we leave out so that it, or anything else, is included?
I think people should know about the Boer War but when was the last time anyone was taught about that - the last soldiers were still marching part the cenotaph as old men when I was a child, when apartheid was still law in SA, when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia. It's all part of the big picture.
Maybe it's time to stop banging on about the Romans (after all, what did they ever do for us...)?

We did lots of world history when I was at school including transatlantic slave trade. However, I learned nothing about the Tudors or English civil war.

@Athrawes I dont expect people to know about the Boer war in depth, but yes I think people should know that it happened and it was where the British set up the first concentration camps.

[quote raspberrymuffin]@mustlovegin it indirectly involved the UK, in that there were strong cultural, historical and economic links with South Africa and we could have made a difference if we'd told them to knock it off. Instead a lot of people in this country supported the regime - some of whom are now government ministers.[/quote]
Also, to be clear, Apartheid as a name was created in 1948 or 1949, but as a concept, had started with the British, long long before. So yes, the ties to South Africa and Apartheid and Britain, are, I agree, long and deep.

To be fair there is a lot of history! I love king Alfred for example and how all the kingdoms of England, Wessex, east anglia, Kent etc came together under his son. That’s my favourite period of history but loads and loads of people in England know diddly squat about it and yet it is England’s history. It’s not really taught in schools.
Also partition in Ireland 100 years ago is also not really taught. So many things.
I also love the Romans and ancient Greeks/ Egyptians and children enjoy this ancient world too so it’s fun/ interesting to learn in primary school plus lots of relevance to England today. The Romans founded London for example.
Also the Viking’s, they raided and pillaged and settled in England for hundreds of years. The Danes were a great sea faring nation thought to have landed in North American before Columbus. So many interesting periods of history to learn about.

In answer to the question of why apartheid may not be explicitly taught in schools, it isn’t on the National Curriculum framework for key stages 1 all the way through to key stage 3 (the last time it was specifically mentioned was in 2007, so could well be a Gove interference job)

Doesn’t mean that a lot of schools wouldn’t teach this through assemblies, clubs, PSHE/Citizenship etc but remember, not all young people listen, engage or may even be absent from school when these take place, so experiences can vary.
We all have knowledge from our past that we either assume young people would also have the same experience of or at least, know of but of course, in reality, that is not true and young people often have better knowledge than us in other areas.

Their knowledge of grammar, phonics and the English language far surpasses mine as a child of Thatcher’s Education Secretary years, for example).
Ultimately, people like the OP are so important as to enrich the lives of the next generation and none of use should assume ‘things’ will be taught in schools, the same ‘things’ will be taught or children will take in what they are taught, either.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239075/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf

I visited South Africa as a child in the 80s and have made sure my children know about it and how wrong it was. I remember the segregated beaches and also, unfortunately, my white family's attitudes (all glossed over now, never happened!). I do remember the boycotts here and a teacher teaching the class about discrimination in SA. My children are at primary school and as far as I am aware have not been taught specifically about apartheid.

@TomPinch

nettie434,

Yes, the concentration on the American civil rights movement is a bit frustrating. It's very small beer compared with the anti-apartheid struggle.

I would imagine that those involved in the US Civil Rights movement might make the same fatuous comment regarding Apartheid! Why is one deemd less important than the other? Schools are expected by too many to be the only educator of children, it's the school's fault if your child doesn't have a piece of knowledge.

I'm very old, we did the French Revolution for 'O' level in the '60s and my teacher was very impressed that 'you've obviously not just relied on the text book'! In fact I'd read a series of bodice-rippers set in the French Revolution well researched by Denis Wheatley! Very little of what I know, other than my own subject knowledge, came from school but I have always read a lot.

You should also bear in mind that the history curriculum is heavily skewed towards British history and then the World Wars

It makes sense that we teach primarily British history here

My dad must have taught me about apartheid, I think watching the film lethal weapon 2 opened up the conversation, then I learnt more as I got older. I think we learnt a bit in secondary school, maybe during English or Geography? I have a vague memory of learning about and discussing afrikaans at some point, in school.

My teens learned about Nelson Mandela in primary and apartheid in secondary (year 8 so not GCSE) They might have forgotten the word apartheid but would (hopefully) have their memory triggered when you started explaining.

We did lots of world history when I was at school including transatlantic slave trade. However, I learned nothing about the Tudors or English civil war

Did you go to school in the UK?

It’s cultural capital isn’t it. At that age my dc knew about apartheid not via school but because of a family friend who was NM’s lawyer, school friends who’d lived there, films, museums etc. A couple of years later and one of them lived there for a summer.

I assume a 16 who doesn’t ‘know stuff’ comes from a household where they don’t read newspapers, watch films and visit museums rather than wonder about the school curriculum.

@ColinTheKoala

How on Earth is teaching your own kids the history of African colonization and then explaining that this is something ALL kids should know from the parents "virtue-signalling"?

The colonization of Africa, the Atlantic slave triangle, the withdrawal and WTO, the Dutch in SA, apartheid, Western perspective and "othering": It's all stuff that kids should know about. It explains why Stephen Lawrence was murdered. It explains why his killers got away with it. It explains why we take the knee.

The OP is aghast that school haven't taught it. I'm aghast that it's not been described, discussed and debated at home.

Virtue-signalling is smug shit on fb like "I'm not sending Christmas cards this year because...."insert twee charity"

If everyone taught racism: origins, manifestations, means of overcoming social injustice at home, we wouldn't be in the mess that we are as a planet.

It's a big deal to me to not only ensure my kids are not racist, but also to make them recognise the subtle manifestations.

Everyone should do the same, not just gaze sheep like at the telly while people take the knee.

I have to say that with the way you've taken this, OP, I find it more shocking that your child reached the age of 16 before you 'found out' they don't know about Apartheid.

Reminds me of a mum who was shocked her 16 or 18 year old didn't know what an ice tray was and how it worked or how to handle some responsibilities at home (she was moving to college) and expected her to have known. All well and good but I was more shocked that in all the time she lived in the house, they never mentioned ice tray to her, never taught her to clean a fridge and what to do with it or do house chores, yet she's supposed to just know. Not an excuse for the child because she could have googled but people don't know they don't know till it comes up.

This is what happens when we expect schools to do all the teaching. Not saying that you do but many do and wonder why their children haven't learnt x,y, z when the responsibility is also down to the parents to impart knowledge, guidance and wisdom.

If you’re 30 it really is living history for you as there would have been widespread related coverage in the news when you were young. Did they not know about Apartheid specifically or were they totally unaware of slavery, segregation, racism? History was very heavily weighted towards the world wars when I was at school. They’re only 16, I doubt I had a great understanding of world history at that age- the history between China, Japan, Korea, break up of the USSR, The situation of the indigenous people of the US, Australia, New Zealand, all the issues in the Middle East and Israel. They’re all still causing issues, racism, ethnic cleansing, subjugation.

@WineGetsMeThroughIt start with Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom"

I teach history and I think people who criticise what hasn’t been taught in history often just haven’t done the maths on how much time there is for the curriculum.

In some schools KS3 is 2 years long and one period per week. Some history departments will be working with a grand total of about 60 hours to teach KS3 (which is where schools have choice and flexibility). That gives you (presuming you want an even split) around 20 hours for medieval history, 20 for early modern and 20 for modern history.

Different departments will make different judgements about what must be covered. Almost all will include the world wars and holocaust in the modern stuff. Some will want to include the industrial revolution, some will do apartheid, some the partition of India, some the Cold War, some the Arab-Israeli wars, some 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, some the breaking up of the British Empire and independence movements, some race relations in Britain, some the US civil rights movement. No school could possibly do all of those things well in the amount of time available. We have a much more generous curriculum time allocation of 100 minutes per week for three years and still have to make tough choices.

Intellectually curious students who read widely will have a bit of a grounding in all of those things but they can’t possibly get it all in their history classroom. Many students only study history for 2 years of secondary school now. Primary school history is variable in quality and depth and many schools have shortened key stage 3 so that GCSE students spend longer on the more limited range of topics at GCSE. It’s sad, but it is what it is.

Actually, in my opinion, the responsibility is, first and foremost, down to the parents.

but people don't know they don't know till it comes up.

This was supposed to say people don't know *what they don't know till it comes up.

I'm 33 and never learnt about it in school.

I am 32 and have heard the word but am just about to google it to see what it is!

apartheid which was only one country.

It wasn’t, though. Apartheid affected the whole world - because of the worldwide South African embargo - in its most basic sense, and lasted for years.

There has been a definite move to focus on British literature in English. Back in my day we had a wider variety of works eg American

The problem is that there is so much history so most people can't know it all. For example they learned about the Berlin Wall being erected but had no idea it had fallen years ago too. There simply isn't enough time to do more than the topics chosen by the curriculum.

Many people on MN would have been alive during apartheid which gives a natural advantage to knowledge.

Ok - googled it. Never learnt it. At our school we didn't really have history, we had humanities in year 7-8 and chose either history, geography or RE for gcse to be taught in year 9 (at least that's what I recall) . I chose geography.