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Title:First Things First: An Essay on Teaching First-Year History at the University of Witwatersrand
Author:Kros, CynthiaISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:South African Historical Journal
Issue:33
Period:November
Pages:119-130
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:history education
History and Exploration
Education and Oral Traditions
Literature, Mass Media and the Press
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582479508671850
Abstract:In this essay on teaching history at Wits (University of the Witwatersrand) to first-year history students the author acknowledges that teaching brings her face to face with herself and her presumptions. She describes her own recollections of the time she was a history student and turns to the question what it is that she wants her students to be able to derive from a study of history. An anonymous survey she held among first-year students showed that these students wanted spoon-feeding rather than learning how to summarize arguments, or exploring different kinds of causality. She realized that many students missed the connections she tried to make while teaching history. History teachers underestimate the power of years of Christian National and Bantu Education in South Africa. Students do not care about the same things teachers did when they were students. Sometimes they do not appear to care at all. The author persists in thinking that Bantu Education has scarred some of the students irredeemably, and that history teachers have not yet located meaningful continuities and reflections capable of throwing back composite images, in which students can still recognize themselves and their world. App., notes, ref.
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