Education in Africa 
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| Title: | Historical literacy in a context of patriotic history: an analysis of Zimbabwean history textbooks |
| Authors: | Maposa, Marshall Tamuka Wassermann, Johan |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Periodical: | Africa Education Review (ISSN 1753-5921) |
| Volume: | 11 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 254-274 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | history education textbooks |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2014.927160 |
| Abstract: | History is one of the five compulsory school subjects in Zimbabwe since 2001. This compulsion speaks to the value with which the government regards the subject especially in teaching youth about the Chimurenga (War of Liberation). The discourses of war have intensified in Zimbabwe since the late 1990s leading to the growth of a historiography of patriotic history. In this paper the authors set out to identify the purpose of school history in Zimbabwe through an analysis of the contemporary history textbooks. They selected three history textbooks on the basis that these reflect the nature of historical literacy that history learners should attain. They applied qualitative textual analysis and specifically discourse analysis to investigate the preface, narrative text, visuals, sources and exercises of the books. The findings show that the textbooks promote a historical literacy dominated by knowledge at the expense of other benchmarks such as conceptual understanding and historical consciousness. This is evidence of a content-heavy curriculum, but the fact the findings follow one narrative (an African nationalist narrative) speaks to the discourses of patriotic history coming from the government. Although the textbooks were produced in the early 1990s, they have continued to be used in schools almost twenty years later because they promote a historical literacy that works in tandem with patriotic history. Bibliogr., note. [Journal abstract, edited] |
